ISTINE    AND 
GENIUS 


BORIS    SIDIS 

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=    1=    i"I 


S  OF  BORIS  SIDIS 


GIFT  OF 

Mr.  /=> 


WORKS  BY  BORIS  SIDIS 


Philistine  and  Genius 

The  Foundations  of  Normal  and 

Abnormal  Psychology 
Symptomatology,  Psychognosis,  and 

Diagnosis  of  Psychopathic  Diseases 
The  Causation  and  Treatment  of 

Psychopathic  Diseases 
The  Psychology  of  Suggestion 
Multiple  Personality 
The  Psychology  of  Laughter 
Psychopathological  Researches 
An  Experimental  Study  of  Sleep 
A  Study  of  Galvanometric  Deflections 
The  Nature  and   Causation  of    the 

Galvanic  Phenomenon 


PHILISTINE  AND 
GENIUS 


BY 
BORIS  SIDIS,  A.M.,  PH.D.,  M.D. 

Medical  Director,  Sidis  Institute,  Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire 


BOSTON:  RICHARD  G.  BADGER 

TORONTO:  THE  COPP CLARK  co.,  LIMITED 


COPYRIGHT,  1917,  BY  BORIS  SIDIS 


All  Rights  Reserved 


, 
\<\ 


Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 
The  Gorham  Press,  Boston,  U.  S.  A. 


TO 
THE  FATHERS  AND  MOTHERS 

OF 
THE  UNITED  STATES 


PREFACE 

WHEN  in  1909  "Philistine  and  Genius" 
was  delivered  by  me  in  the  form  of  a 
Commencement  address  before  the  Har- 
vard Summer  School,  my  prediction  of 
the  coming  European  war  storm  was  re- 
garded by  everybody  as  dream  and  fancy. 
My  best  friends  and  sympathisers  thought 
my  foreboding  unjustified  and  ill-found- 
ed. I  was  an  alarmist,  a  Cassandra,  when 
I  spoke  of  the  coming  catastrophe  which 
was  to  shake  Europe  to  its  very  founda- 
tion. When  "Philistine  and  Genius"  was 
published  in  1911  the  American  and 
European  press,  dealing  with  the  views 
advanced  in  this  little  volume,  completely 


vi  PREFACE 

ignored  the  following  warning  given  by 
me: 

"About  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  Buckle  made  the  prediction  that 
no  war  was  any  more  to  occur  among  civ- 
ilized nations.  Henceforth  peace  was  to 
reign  supreme.  'The  wolf  shall  dwell  with 
the  lamb,  and  the  leopard  shall  lie  down 
with  the  kid;  their  young  ones  shall  lie 
down  together,  and  the  lion  shall  eat 
straw  like  the  ox.  ...  Nations  shall  beat 
their  swords  into  ploughshares,  and  their 
spears  into  pruning  hooks.  Nations  shall 
not  lift  up  swords  against  nations,  nor 
shall  they  learn  war  any  more.'  This 
prophecy  was  rather  hasty.  We  have  had 
since  the  Civil  war,  the  Franco-Prussian 
war,  the  Spanish- American  war,  the  Boer 
war,  the  Russo-Japanese  war,  not  count- 
ing the  ceaseless  wars  of  extermination 
carried  on  by  civilized  nations  among  the 


PREFACE  vii 

various  semi-civilized  and  primitive  tribes. 
Civilized  nations  do  not  as  yet  beat  their 
swords  into  ploughshares,  but  keep  on  in- 
creasing the  strength  of  their  'armed 
peace,'  and  are  ready  to  fight  bloody 
battles  in  the  quest  of  new  lands  and  the 
conquest  of  new  markets. 

"In  spite  of  the  Hague  conference,  con- 
voked by  the  peace-loving  Czar,  no  other 
age  has  had  such  large  standing  armies 
provided  with  such  costly  and  efficient 
weapons  of  execution  ready  for  instant 
use.  The  red  spectre  still  stalks  abroad 
claiming  its  victims.  We  still  believe  in 
the  baptism  of  fire  and  redemption  by 
blood.  The  dogma  of  blood  redemption 
is  still  at  the  basis  of  our  faith,  and,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  we  brand  that 
sacred  creed  on  the  minds  of  the  young 
generation." 

The  present  European  upheaval  has 


viii  PREFACE 

finally  disclosed  to  the  impartial  observer 
the  fearful  state  of  Europe  as  the  final 
outcome  of  its  "armed  peace."  Instead  of 
realizing  the  dangers  of  armed  peace  or 
of  "preparedness,"  we  are  ready  to  be- 
come a  military  democracy  in  which  every 
able-bodied  man  is  a  soldier  or  a  sailor, 
every  child  is  a  scout,  and  every  woman 
a  nurse  or  a  munition  worker.  We  are 
anxious  to  waste  our  resources  on  prepar- 
edness rather  than  on  the  education  of  the 
young.  We  hanker  for  the  greatest  navy 
in  the  world  at  a  cost  of  several  billions 
of  dollars.  We  aspire  after  a  million 
headed,  billion  armed  navy  and  army. 
We  clamor  for  universal,  compulsory, 
military  service  in  which  our  children 
should  be  drilled  for  murder  and  slaugh- 
ter at  the  decree  of  a  few  autocratic  offi- 
cials and  officers.  We  imitate  Europe 
slavishly,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  pol- 


PREFACE  ix 

icy  of  preparedness  or  of  "armed  peace" 
has  kept  Europe  in  a  state  of  turmoil  for 
generations,  has  brought  her  to  the  brink 
of  ruin,  and  has  plunged  her  into  the  most 
cruel  and  most  destructive  war  ever  waged 
by  man. 

The  recent  estimate  of  Count  von  Roe- 
dern,  Secretary  of  the  Imperial  German 
Treasury,  puts  the  total  cost  of  the  war 
to  date,  the  end  of  1916,  for  all  the  bel- 
ligerents, at  fifty-nine  and  a  half  billions 
of  dollars.  The  Mechanics  and  Metals 
National  Bank  of  New  York  City  figures 
that  seventy-five  billion  dollars  will  be 
spent  for  direct  military  purposes,  if  the 
war  lasts  another  year.  The  enormity  of 
that  expenditure  can  only  be  realized  if 
we  consider  that  the  total  wealth  of  Great 
Britain  and  Ireland  is  eighty-five  billions 
of  dollars,  that  of  Germany  eighty  bil- 
lions, that  of  France  fifty  billions,  that  of 


x  PREFACE 

Russia  forty  billions,  that  of  Austria- 
Hungary  twenty-five  billions,  and  that  of 
Italy  twenty  billions.  Such  waste  is  ap- 
palling ! 

According  to  the  figures  given  by  Mr. 
Frank  H.  Simonds,  eighteen  and  a  half 
million  casualties,  of  which  deaths  make 
up  nearly  one-quarter,  is  the  toll  already 
levied  on  the  fighting  men  of  all  the  bel- 
ligerent nations  by  twenty-six  months  of 
war.  More  than  any  other  war  the  pres- 
ent European  struggle  squanders  the 
wealth  of  empires  and  sacrifices  the  lives 
of  nations. 

Our  social  status  is  a  reversion  to  sav- 
agery of  the  most  degenerate  type,  an 
atavistic  lapse  towards  the  paleolithic  and 
eolithic  man,  only  more  brutal,  on  account 
of  the  greater  power  for  evil  possessed  by 
modern  man.  What  Hun  or  Vandal  ever 
dreamt  of  such  colossal  destruction!  The 


PREFACE  xi 

fame  of  Attila,  Jenghiz  Khan,  Batu,  and 
Tamerlane  pales  and  fades  before  the 
glory  of  the  Kaiser.  In  a  couple  of  years 
the  aggressive  German  "Kultur"  has 
caused  more  ruin  to  humanity  than  all  the 
invasions  of  the  yellow  peril  in  the  history 
of  mankind.  Can  we  take  issue  with  the 
late  Professor  Royce  of  Harvard  when 
he  declares  the  German  Empire  to  be  "the 
wilful  and  the  deliberate  enemy  of  the 
human  race"? 

Some  future  historian  in  describing  our 
times  will  place  us  below  the  moral  level 
of  our  contemporaries,  the  Bushman  and 
the  Hottentot.  He  may  say:  "Towards 
the  end  of  the  nineteenth  and  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  twentieth  century  there  took 
place  a  vast  accumulation  of  wealth,  due 
to  a  rapid  development  of  science  and 
practical  arts.  Instead,  however,  of  im- 
proving their  condition,  European  nations 


xii  PREFACE 

deteriorated   morally   and   intellectually. 

"Liberal  education  gave  way  to  techni- 
cal training.  Science  served  greed.  Edu- 
cation became  mechanical  and  military  in 
character.  The  successful  banker,  the 
greedy  usurer,  the  commonplace  store- 
keeper, the  mediocre  shopkeeper,  the  phi- 
listine  patriotic  business  man  became  the 
patterns,  the  ideals,  the  guides,  and  lead- 
ers of  commercialized  nations.  Advertis- 
ing and  notoriety  became  the  rage  and  the 
bane  of  society.  The  thinker  gave  way  to 
the  tinker,  the  scientist  to  the  mechanic, 
the  artist  to  the  artisan,  the  genius  to  the 
philistine.  False  patriotism  of  the  jingo 
type,  controlled  and  animated  by  indus- 
trial and  commercial  interests,  became  the 
standard  of  nations.  An  insane  frenzy 
of  militarism  seized  on  the  minds  of  na- 
tions. Blind  obedience  became  a  virtue. 

"The    state    enslaved    the    individual. 


PREFACE  xiii 

Drill  and  discipline  stupefied  people.  Na- 
tions boasting  of  scientific  efficiency  and 
'kultur'  broke  treaties,  attacked,  de- 
stroyed, deported,  enslaved  whole  popula- 
tions of  small,  weak,  neighboring  coun- 
tries. Women  and  babes  were  drowned 
like  rats  in  the  middle  of  the  ocean.  Aero- 
planes and  Zeppelins  showered  explosive 
missiles  on  defenceless  people.  For  such 
cowardly,  inhuman,  and  diabolical  acts  the 
miscreants  were  decorated  and  honored  as 
heroes  by  their  alleged  superiors.  Man 
could  not  have  fallen  to  any  lower  level. 
"The  elements  of  nature  were  let  loose 
for  the  ruin  of  nations.  Man  gloried 
in  his  devilish,  military,  inventive  power 
of  destruction.  Professors,  carrying  high 
the  banner  of  'kultur,'  exulted  in  the  de- 
grading, vicious  process  of  training  by 
which  the  individual  is  hypnotized  and 
narcotized  into  submission  to  a  brutal  or- 


xiv  PREFACE 

ganization  of  military  junkers,  hallowed 
by  the  name  of  State.  All  conception  of 
free,  individual  development  was  lost 
among  the  Germanic  tribes  of  Central 
Europe.  It  was  the  darkest  period  in  the 
history  of  mankind.  Assaults  on  coun- 
tries, massacres  of  nations,  deportation  of 
populations  into  slavery  for  powerful  mu- 
nition interests,  all  such  outrages,  digni- 
fied by  the  name  of  war  for  the  defense  of 
the  Fatherland,  had  not  their  parallel  even 
in  the  most  degrading  period  of  the  his- 
tory of  humanity.  Man  was  crazed  with 
the  lust  of  blood,  frenzied  with  rapine  and 
slaughter." 

Such  will  be  the  just  estimate  of  our 
times  by  a  future  impartial  historian. 

,We  possess  indeed  vast  stores  of  wealth, 
but  we  have  not  as  yet  learned  their  use. 
Like  silly  upstarts,  we  use  our  wealth  for 
dissipation  and  ruin.  Our  greed  and 


PREFACE  xv 

cruelty  seem  to  grow  with  our  possessions. 
Greed  with  its  army  and  navy  is  like  the 
Biblical  horseleech  that  "hath  two  daugh- 
ters crying,  'Give,  give.' '  Human  life, 
man's  genius,  we  hold  in  no  esteem.  We 
sink  the  value  of  man  in  the  price  of  his 
product.  We  raise  the  value  of  stock,  but 
lower  the  worth  of  man.  Our  young  gen- 
eration is  trained  by  fear  into  discipline 
and  obedience.  We  suppress  the  genius 
in  the  child,  raise  mediocrity,  and  cultivate 
the  philistine. 

"Obedience  and  discipline  are  the  main- 
stay of  family  and  school,"  told  me  an 
otherwise  intelligent  schoolmaster.  "I 
control  my  children  with  kindness,  if  pos- 
sible, and  if  needs  be,  with  force."  The 
child  is  trained  to  act  not  by  the  light  of 
reason,  but  by  the  command  of  superior 
force.  The  child  is  ruled  by  fear! 

As  a  protection  against  fear  the  child 


xvi  PREFACE 

learns  to  be  secretive,  evasive  of  truth,  and 
cowardly  of  action.  These  traits  of  char- 
acter, acquired  in  early  childhood,  become 
basic.  The  child  will  never  fully  rid  him- 
self of  fear  and  its  distressing  conse- 
quences. Fear  will  stay  with  him,  and 
dog  his  steps  all  his  life  long. 

Fear  is  one  of  the  most  fundamental  of 
animal  instincts,  it  is  the  companion  of 
the  most  primitive  impulse  of  self-preser- 
vation. Once  this  fear  instinct  is  aroused, 
it  grows  like  an  avalanche  in  its  downward 
course.  In  later  life  this  fear  instinct  be- 
comes manifested  in  various  ways,  giving 
rise  to  the  most  distressing  nervous  and 
mental  symptoms.  In  my  medical  prac- 
tice, as  specialist  of  nervous  and  mental 
diseases,  I  have  traced  again  and  again  the 
worst  forms  of  maladies  to  the  fear  instinct 
aroused  in  early  childhood. 

Training  by  fear,  submission,  and  obe- 


PREFACE  xvii 

dience  opens  the  door  wide  to  all  kinds  of 
nervous  and  mental  germs,  weakening  the 
mental  and  moral  constitution  of  man. 
Man  becomes  unreasonable,  capricious, 
driven  by  the  impulse  of  self-preservation 
and  by  the  furies  of  the  fear  instinct.  The 
impulse  of  self-preservation  with  its  satel- 
lite the  fear  instinct  becomes  predominant 
in  character  which  lacks  the  stamina  of 
sturdiness,  frankness,  openmindedness 
and  independence. 

A  person  brought  up  in  the  school  of 
fear  and  blind  obedience  lacks  steadiness 
of  purpose,  courage,  independence,  critical 
judgment,  becomes  bigoted  and  intoler- 
ant. He  falls  an  easy  prey  to  the  sugges- 
tions of  his  times  and  surroundings,  suc- 
cumbs to  the  influence  of  unscrupulous 
leaders.  Such  a  person  lacks  mental  and 
moral  poise,  he  is  wanting  in  the  true  cour- 
age of  reason,  present  in  the  fully  devel- 


xviii  PREFACE 

oped  man  and  woman.  He  can  not  with- 
stand the  pressure  of  social  opinion,  being 
unable  to  stand  by  his  post  in  the  face  of 
threatening  social  opposition.  Ruled  by 
fear  at  home,  he  is  governed  by  terror  in 
society.  He  is  afraid  of  social  punish- 
ment, "of  losing  face,"  as  the  Chinese  say, 
with  his  neighbors,  gossips,  circles  and 
clubs.  He  dreads  above  all  the  judgment 
of  the  crowd,  and  is  scared  by  the  jeers  and 
ridicule  of  the  mob.  Human  life  interests 
become  limited  by  the  narrow  horizon  of 
a  mob-ruled  personality.  The  unceasing 
obedience  to  the  suggestions  of  the  crowd 
weakens  and  loosens  the  reasoning  and 
moral  fibre,  reduces  the  energies  of  the 
mind  to  the  animal  level,  controlled  by 
self-preservation  and  fear. 

With  reduced  and  impoverished  ener- 
gies, the  person,  in  case  of  trouble  and 
misfortune,  is  unable  to  fall  back  on  his 


PREFACE  xix 

inner  resources,  he  falls  a  prey  to  worry, 
fear,  anxiety,  and  disease.  In  other  cases 
the  intellectual  and  moral  powers  are  en- 
feebled by  the  rigid  discipline  and  by  the 
course  of  enforced  obedience,  the  person 
falls  a  victim  to  all  forms  of  temptations. 
With  no  principle  to  guide  him,  with  no 
will  to  stay  him,  the  person  drifts  help- 
lessly on  the  stream  of  life.  Lured  by  se- 
ductive sirens,  his  life  is  finally  wrecked 
on  the  rocks  and  reefs  of  vice,  sin,  crime, 
and  disease. 

Where  stumbling  on  vice,  disease,  and 
crime  is  avoided,  the  person  inevitably 
lands  on  the  dull  shores  of  the  Lotophagi. 
Ideas  and  ideals  are  forgotten  and  for- 
saken in  the  routine  of  animal  existence. 
This  is  the  land  of  Philistinism,  a  land 
where  all  human,  humane  interests,  inde- 
pendent thought,  and  courageous  action 
are  wanting.  Philistines  are  uncritical, 


xx  PREFACE 

unconscious  of  defects  and  faults,  living  in 
the  mire  of  self-contented  stupidity  and 
mediocrity.  They  cease  to  grow  mentally 
and  morally.  Their  intellectual  and  moral 
capacities  become  paralyzed,  atrophied. 
Man  becomes  the  equal  of  the  brute. 

With  a  philistine  education  and  train- 
ing, man  is  fit  to  become  one  of  those  un- 
fortunate and  pitiful  European  pawns 
and  automata  who  obey  blindly  the  com- 
mands of  their  superior  officers.  Philis- 
tines shoot,  stab,  poison,  pillage,  burn, 
outrage,  and  murder  at  the  command  of 
unscrupulous,  self-seeking  leaders,  brutal 
junkers,  bloodhounds  of  empires. 

Brought  up  in  a  school  of  fear,  obedi- 
ence, and  suggestibility,  the  philistine,  like 
Cain,  murders  his  brother  without  aim 
and  without  understanding  the  full  sig- 
nificance of  the  awful  deed.  He  is  no  more 
responsible  than  is  the  machine  gun  which 


PREFACE  xxi 

he  accurately  trains  and  points  at  his  sup- 
posed enemies.  Philistines  are  led  to  the 
battlefield  like  cattle  to  the  slaughter 
house.  Philistines  have  no  personality, 
no  individuality,  they  are  cogs  in  wheels, 
links  in  chains  of  monster  mechanisms. 

The  philistine,  the  product  of  our  home 
and  school,  is  suggestible  and  gullible,  he 
is  always  on  the  lookout  for  authority,  for 
a  leader  whom  he  should  worship,  by  whose 
opinions  and  conviction  he  is  ready  to 
swear,  whose  command  he  is  ready  and 
proud  to  follow.  The  philistine  is  good 
material  for  mobs,  for  mental  epidemics, 
for  religious  crazes,  and  for  all  kinds  of 
hysterical  movements  in  which  not  reason 
but  emotional  automatism  is  in  the  fore- 
ground. Philistinism,,  stupidity,  and  im- 
plicit obedience  of  a  mojistrons,  efficient 
Kar  machine  are  intimately  interrelated. 
The  individual  becomes  a  private,  the 


xxii  PREFACE 

nation  an  army,  and  the  country  a 
camp. 

Do  we  as  parents  wish  to  bring  up  our 
children  as  soulless,  willless  machines  ?  Do 
we  wish  them  to  be  without  good  judg- 
ment, without  personal  convictions?  Do 
we  wish  them  to  be  led  about  like  cattle? 
We  certainly  wish  them  to  be  of  strong 
nature  and  sturdy  character,  able  to  stand 
by  their  convictions,  able  to  use  their  criti- 
cal judgment,  able  to  discriminate  the 
right  from  the  wrong,  able  to  love  the  good 
and  avoid  the  evil. 

In  The  Psychology  of  Suggestion,  pub- 
lished by  me  in  1897,  I  arrive  at  the  con- 
clusion that  "Personality  is  suppressed  by 
the  rigidity  of  social  organization;  the 
cultivated,  civilized  individual  is  an  auto- 
maton, a  mere  puppet."  .  .  .  Again, 
"Under  the  enormous  weight  of  the  socio- 
static  press  .  .  .  the  personal  self  sinks, 


PREFACE  xxiii 

the  suggestible,  subconscious,  social,  im- 
personal self  rises  to  the  surface,  gets 
trained  and  cultivated,  and  becomes  the 
hysterical  actor  in  all  the  tragedies  of 
historical  life."  ...  In  recent  European 
events  the  suggestible,  social  self  plays  the 
chief  role. 

In  the  same  work  I  come  to  the  follow- 
ing conclusion:  "When  social  conditions 
are  of  such  a  nature  as  to  charge  society 
with  strong  emotional  excitement,  or  when 
institutions  dwarf  individuality,  when 
they  arrest  personal  growth,  when  they 
hinder  the  free  development  and  exercise 
of  the  personal,  controlling  consciousness, 
then  society  falls  into  a  hypnoid  condi- 
tion, the  social  mind  gets  disaggregated. 
The  gregarious  self  begins  to  move  within 
the  bosom  of  the  crowd,  and  becomes 
active;  the  demon  of  the  demos  emerges 
to  the  surface  of  social  life,  and  throws 


xxiv  PREFACE 

the    body    politic    into    convulsions    of 
demoniac  fury." 

The  European  horrors,  atrocities,  and 
brutalities,  dignified  by  the  stupefying 
and  hypnotizing  slogan  "Kultur,  Pa- 
triotism," are  due  to  the  early  training, 
by  fear  and  force,  of  the  individual  into 
submission  to  superior  authority.  Such 
pernicious  training  sacrifices  the  genius 
of  the  child,  the  originality  of  the  man, 
to  a  highly  efficient,  but  brutal  and  blood- 
thirsty Moloch  State.  The  European 
war  is  a  mental  plague  which  attacks  gi- 
gantic, social  aggregates  when  their  ulti- 
mate constituent  units,  the  individuals, 
are  deprived  of  independent  thought  and 
liberty  of  decision  and  action,  when  men 
are  swayed  by  hypnotizing  suggestions 
of  "superior  leaders"  who  represent  the 
interests  not  of  every  individual  at  his 
best,  but  of  high  noble  castes  and  of  com- 


PREFACE  xxv 

mercial  classes.  The  organized  murder  of 
European  nations  is  due  to  the  stifling 
of  human  genius  by  the  cultivation  of 
mob  spirit  which  is  the  cause  of  all 
forms  of  social  insanity  and  mental  epi- 
demics. 

In  the  stifling  of  the  genius  of  the  child 
and  the  cultivation  of  the  mob  spirit 
America  does  not  lag  behind  Europe. 
Mental  epidemics,  excited  by  the  fear  in- 
stinct and  by  the  impulse  of  self-preserva- 
tion, are  prevalent  in  the  States.  As  de- 
scribed by  me  in  The  Psychology  of  Sug- 
gestion: "American  society  oscillates  be- 
tween acute  financial  mania  and  attacks 
of  religious  insanity.  No  sooner  is  the 
business  fever  over  than  the  delirium 
acutum  of  religious  mania  sets  in.  So- 
ciety is  thrown  from  Scylla  into  Charyb- 
dis.  From  the  heights  of  financial  specu- 
lation society  sinks  into  the  abyss  of  re- 


xx  vi  PREFACE 

vivalism.  American  society  seems  to  suf- 
fer from  circular  insanity/" 

Revivalism,  a  mental  frenzy  to  which 
the  American  mob  mind  is  specially  prone, 
is  a  resurrection  of  Greek  Bacchanalia 
and  Roman  Saturnalia.  Revivals  are 
emotional  debauches,  religious  orgies.  As 
I  had  pointed  out  in  the  same  work:  "Re- 
vivalism is  far  more  dangerous  to  the  life 
of  society  than  drunkenness.  .  .  .  As  a 
sot  man  falls  below  the  brute ;  as  a  revival- 
ist he  sinks  lower  than  the  sot." 

If  Europe  is  in  violent  convulsions  of 
war  insanity,  America  suffers  from  no 
less  serious  mental  maladies, — speculation 
frenzies,  revival  manias,  and  preparedness 
plagues.  Mental  epidemics  are  ineradi- 
cable afflictions  of  the  highly  evolved  mob 
spirit  characteristic  of  the  philistine.  The 
evolution  of  the  philistine  is  the  involu- 
tion of  genius.  Philistinism  is  social  de- 


PREFACE  xxvii 


cay.     The  progress  of  humanity  is 
brute  to  man,  from  Philistine  to  Genius^ 

BORIS  SIDIS. 
Sidis  Institute, 
Maplewood  Farm, 

Portsmouth,  New  Hampshire. 


PHILISTINE  AND   GENIUS 


PHILISTINE   AND   GENIUS 


I  ADDRESS  myself  to  you,  fathers  and 
mothers,  and  to  you,  open-minded  read- 
ers. I  take  it  for  granted  that  your  life- 
work  is  with  you  a  serious  matter  and  that 
you  put  forth  all  your  efforts  to  do  your 
best  in  the  walk  of  life  which  you  have 
chosen.  I  assume  that  you  want  to  de- 
velop your  energies  to  the  highest  effi- 
ciency and  bring  out  the  best  there  is  in 
you.  I  assume  that  you  earnestly  wish  and 
strive  to  bring  out  and  develop  to  the  high- 
est efficiency  the  faculties  not  only  of  your 
children,  but  also  those  of  your  friends 

and  co-workers  with  whom  you  associate 

i 


2  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

in  your  daily  vocation,  and  that  you  are 
deeply  interested  in  the  education  of  your 
countrymen  and  their  children,  who  share 
with  you  the  duties,  rights  and  privileges 
of  citizenship.  I  also  assume  that  as  men 
and  women  of  liberal  education  you  are 
not  limited  to  the  narrow  interests  of  one 
particular  subject,  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
else.  I  assume  that  you  are  especially 
interested  in  the  development  of  person- 
ality as  a  whole,  the  true  aim  of  education. 
I  also  assume*  that  you  realize  that  what 
is  requisite  is  not  some  more  routine,  not 
more  desiccated,  quasi-scientific  methods 
of  educational  psychology,  not  the  saw- 
dust of  college-pseudagogics  and  philis- 
tine,  normal  school-training,  but  more 
light  on  the  problems  of  life.  What  you 
want  is  not  the  training  of  philistines,  but 
the  education  of  genius. 

We  need  more  light,  more  information 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  3 

on  "the  problems  of  life."  Is  it  not 
too  big  a  phrase  to  employ?  On  a  second 
thought,  however,  I  must  say  that  your 
problems  are  the  problems  of  life.  For 
the  problems  of  education  are  funda- 
mental, they  are  at  the  bottom  of  all  vital 
problems.  The  ancient  Greeks  were 
aware  of  it  and  paid  special  attention  to 
education.  In  rearing  his  revolutionary, 
Utopian  edifice,  Plato  insists  on  education 
as  the  foundation  of  a  new  social,  moral 
and  intellectual  life.  Plato  in  his  Repub- 
lic makes  Socrates  tell  his  interlocutor, 
Adeimantus:  "Then  you  are  aware  that 
in  every  work  the  beginning  is  the  most 
important  part,  especially  in  dealing  with 
anything  young  and  tender?  For  that  is 
the  time, when  any  impression  which  one 
may  desire  to  communicate  is  most  readily 
stamped  and  taken." 

We  may  say  that  all  man's  struggles, 


4  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

religious,  moral  and  economical,  all  the 
combats  and  conflicts  that  fill  the  history 
of  mankind,  can  be  traced  finally  to  the 
nature  and  vigor  of  the  desires,  beliefs 
and  strivings  which  have  been  cultivated 
by  the  social  environment  in  the  early  life 
of  the  individual.  The  character  of  a  na- 
tion is  moulded  by  the  nature  of  its  edu- 
cation. The  character  of  society  depends 
on  the  early  training  of  its  constituent 
units.  The  fatalism,  the  submissiveness 
of  the  Oriental;  the  sestheticism,  the  in- 
dependence, love  of  innovations  and  in- 
quisitiveness  of  the  ancient  Greek;  the 
ruggedness,  sturdiness,  harshness  and 
conservatism  of  the  ancient  Roman;  the 
emotionalism,  the  religious  fervor  of  the 
ancient  Hebrew;  the  commercialism,  rest- 
lessness, speculation  and  scientific  spirit 
of  modern  times,  are  all  the  results  of  the 
nature  of  the  early  education  the  individ- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  5 

ual  gets  in  his  respective  social  environ- 
ment. We  may  say  that  the  education 
of  early  life  forms  the  very  foundation 
of  the  social  structure. 

Like  clay  in  the  hands  of  the  potter, 
so  is  man  in  the  hands  of  his  community. 
Society  fashions  the  beliefs,  the  desires, 
the  aims,  the  strivings,  the  knowledge, 
the  ideals,  the  character,  the  minds,  the 
very  selves  of  its  constituent  units.  Who 
has  the  control  of  this  vital  function  of 
moulding  minds?  Fathers  and  mothers, 
the  child  is  under  your  control.  To  your 
hands,  to  your  care  is  entrusted  the  fate 
of  young  generations,  the  fate  of  the  fu- 
ture community,  which,  consciously  or 
unconsciously,  you  fashion  according  to 
the  accepted  standards  and  traditions  with 
which  you  have  been  imbued  in  your  own 
education. 

It  is   related,    I  think,   in  Plutarch's 


6  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

Lives,  of  Themistocles  telling  with  the 
ironical  frankness  characteristic  of  the 
Greek  temperament  that  his  son  possessed 
the  greatest  power  in  Greece:  "For  the 
Athenians  command  the  rest  of  Greece,  I 
command  the  Athenians,  his  mother  com- 
mands me,  and  he  commands  his  mother." 
This  bit  of  Greek  irony  is  not  without  its 
significance.  The  mind  of  the  growing 
generation  controls  the  future  of  nations. 
The  boy  is  father  to  the  man,  as  the 
proverb  has  it;  he  controls  the  future. 
But  who  controls  the  boy?  The  home, 
the  mother  and  father,  the  guides  of  the 
child's  early  life.  For  it  is  in  early  life 
that  the  foundation  of  our  mental  edifice 
is  laid.  All  that  is  good,  valid  and  solid 
in  man's  mental  structure  depends  on  the 
breadth,  width,  depth,  and  solidity  of  that 
foundation. 


II 

THAT  the  groundwork  of  man's  character 
is  laid  in  his  childhood  appears  as  a  triv- 
ial platitude.  I  am  almost  ashamed  to 
bring  it  before  you.  And  yet,  as  I  look 
round  me  and  find  how  apt  we  are  to  for- 
get this  simple  precept  which  is  so  funda- 
mental in  our  life,  I  cannot  help  calling 
your  attention  to  it.  If  we  consider  the 
matter,  we  can  well  understand  the  reason 
why  its  full  significance  is  not  realized. 
We  must  remember  that  all  science  begins 
with  axioms  which  are  apparently  truisms. 
What  is  more  of  a  truism  than  the  axioms 
of  Geometry  and  Mechanics — that  the 
whole  is  greater  than  the  part,  that  things 
which  are  equal  to  the  same  thing  are 


8  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

equal  to  one  another,  or  that  a  body  re- 
mains in  the  same  state  unless  an  exter- 
nal force  changes  it?  And  yet  the  whole 
of  Mathematics  and  Mechanics  is  built  on 
those  simple  axioms. 

The  elements  of  science  are  just  such 
obvious  platitudes.  What  is  needed  is  to 
use  them  as  efficient  tools  and  by  their 
means  draw  the  consequent  effects.  The 
same  holds  true  in  the  science  of  educa- 
tion. The  axiom  or  the  law  of  early 
training  is  not  new,  it  is  well  known,  but 
it  is  unfortunately  too  often  neglected 
and  forgotten,  and  its  significance  is  al- 
most completely  lost. 

It  is  certainly  surprising  how  this  law 
of  early  training  is  so  disregarded,  so  to- 
tally ignored  in  the  education  of  the  child. 
Not  only  do  we  neglect  to  lay  the  neces- 
sary solid  basis  in  the  early  life  of  the 
child,  a  solid  basis  ready  for  the  future 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  9 

structure,  we  do  not  even  take  care  to 
clear  the  ground.  In  fact,  we  even  make 
the  child's  soul  a  dunghill,  full  of  vermin 
of  superstitions,  fears  and  prejudices, — 
a  hideous  heap  saturated  with  the  spirit  of 
credulity. 

We  regard  the  child's  mind  as  a  tabula 
rasa,  a  vacant  lot,  and  empty  on  it  all  our 
rubbish  and  refuse.  We  labor  under  the 
delusion  that  stories  and  fairy  tales,  myths 
and  deceptions  about  life  and  man  are 
good  for  the  child's  mind.  Is  it  a  won- 
der that  on  such  a  foundation  men  can 
only  put  up  shacks  and  shanties?  We 
forget  the  simple  fact  that  what  is  harm- 
ful for  the  adult  is  still  more  harmful  to 
the  child.  Surely  what  is  poisonous  to 
the  grown-up  mind  cannot  be  useful  food 
to  the  young.  If  credulity  in  old  wives' 
tales,  lack  of  individuality,  sheepish  sub- 
missiveness,  barrack-discipline,  unques- 


10  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

tioned  and  uncritical  belief  in  authority, 
meaningless  imitation  of  jingles  and  gib- 
berish, memorization  of  mother-goose  wis- 
dom, repetition  of  incomprehensible  pray- 
ers and  articles  of  creed,  unintelligent 
aping  of  good  manners,  silly  games,  preju- 
dices and  superstitions  and  fears  of  the 
supernormal  and  supernatural,  are  cen- 
sured in  adults,  why  should  we  approve 
their  cultivation  in  the  young? 

At  home  and  at  school  we  drill  into  the 
child's  mind  uncritical  beliefs  in  stories  and 
tales,  fictions  and  figments,  fables  and 
myths,  creeds  and  dogmas  which  poison 
the  very  sources  of  the  child's  mind.  At 
home  and  at  school  we  give  the  child  over 
as  a  prey  to  all  sorts  of  fatal  germs  of  men- 
tal diseases  and  moral  depravity.  We 
leave  the  child's  mind  an  open  field  to 
be  sown  with  dragon's  teeth  which  bring 
forth  a  whole  crop  of  pernicious  tenden- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  11 

cies, — love  and  admiration  of  successful 
evil,  and  adoration  of  the  rule  of  brute 
force.  From  the  dragon's  teeth  sown  in 
early  childhood  there  rises  in  later  life  a 
whole  brood  of  flint-hearted  men  who 
blindly  jostle  and  fight  and  mercilessly 
tear  one  another,  to  obtain  for  some  greedy 
Jason,  some  witch  of  a  Medea  their  cov- 
eted golden  fleece. 


Ill 

WE  regard  with  disapproval  the  bloody 
combats  of  some  savage  tribe;  we  regard 
with  horror  the  sacrifice  of  children  and 
prisoners  to  some  idol  of  a  Phenician  Mo- 
loch or  Mexican  Huitzlio-Potchli ;  we  are 
shocked  at  the  criminal  proceedings  of  the 
infamous  Torquemada  with  his  inquisi- 
tion glorying  in  its  terrors  and  tortures 
in  the  name  of  Christ;  we  are  sickened  as 
we  read  of  the  religious  wars  in  Europe; 
we  shudder  at  the  horrors  of  the  night 
of  St.  Bartholomew;  we  are  appalled  by 
the  recent  slaughters  of  the  Jews  in  Rus- 
sia, by  the  wholesale  massacre  of  the 
Christians  in  Turkey. 

All  such  atrocities,  we  say,  belong  to 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  13 

barbaric  ages  and  are  only  committed  in 
semi-civilized  countries.  We  flatter  our- 
selves that  we  are  different  in  this  age  of 
enlightenment  and  civilization.  Are  we 
different?  Have  we  changed?  Have 
we  a  right  to  fling  stones  at  our  older 
brothers,  the  savage  and  the  barbarian? 
We  are  so  used  to  our  life  that  we  do  not 
notice  its  evils  and  misery.  We  can  easily 
see  the  mote  in  the  eye  of  our  neighbor, 
but  do  not  notice  the  beam  in  our  own. 

We  are  still  savage  at  heart.  Our  civi- 
lization is  mere  gloss,  a  thin  coating 
of  paint  and  varnish.  Our  methods  of 
inflicting  pain  are  more  refined  than  those 
of  the  Indian,  but  no  less  cruel,  while  the 
number  of  the  victims  sacrificed  to  our 
greed  and  rapacity  may  even  exceed  the 
numbers  fallen  by  the  sword  of  the  barbar- 
ian or  by  the  torch  of  the  fanatic.  The 
slums  in  our  cities  are  foul  and  filthy, 


14  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

teeming  with  deadly  germs  of  disease 
where  the  mortality  of  our  infants  and 
children  in  some  cases  rises  to  the  frightful 
figure  of  204  per  thousand! 

The  sanitary  conditions  of  our  cities 
are  filthy  and  deadly.  They  carry  in 
their  wake  all  forms  of  plagues,  pests 
and  diseases,  among  which  tuberculosis  is 
so  well  known  to  the  laity.  "Tubercu- 
losis," reads  a  report  of  a  Tenement 
House  Commission,  "is  one  of  the  results 
of  our  inhumane  tenements;  it  follows  in 
the  train  of  our  inhumane  sweatshops. 
It  comes  where  the  hours  of  labor  are 
long  and  the  wages  are  small;  it  afflicts 
the  children  who  are  sent  to  labor  when 
they  should  yet  be  in  school." 

"The  Consumers'  League,"  says  Mr. 
John  Graham  Brooks,  "long  hesitated  to 
lay  stress  upon  these  aspects  of  filth  and 
disease,  because  of  their  alarmist  and  sen- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  15 

sational  nature,  and  of  the  immediate  and 
grave  risk  to  the  consumer  of  the  goods 
manufactured  in  the  sweatshop  and  the 
tenement  house.  If  the  sweatshop  spread 
diphtheria  and  scarlet  fever,  there  is  the 
hue  and  cry  before  personal  danger.  But 
these  diseases  are  the  very  slightest  ele- 
ments of  the  real  risk  to  the  general  good. 
It  is  the  spoiled  human  life,  with  its 
deadly  legacy  of  enfeebled  mind  and 
body,  that  reacts  directly  and  indirectly 
on  the  social  whole."  We  do  not  realize 
that  we  drift  into  national  degeneracy. 
We  fail  to  realize  that  we  raise  a  genera- 
tion of  stunted  lives,  of  physical  and 
nervous  wrecks,  of  mental  invalids  and 
moral  cripples. 

We  boast  of  our  wealth  unrivalled  by 
other  countries  and  by  former  ages.  We 
should  remember  the  great  poverty  of  our 
masses,  the  filthy  conditions  of  our  wealthy 


16  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

cities,  with  their  loathsome  city-slums,  in 
which  human  beings  live,  breed  and  teem 
like  so  many  worms. 

We  spend  on  barracks  and  prisons 
more  than  we  do  on  schools  and  colleges. 
What  is  the  level  of  a  civilization  in 
which  the  cost  of  crime  and  war  far  ex- 
ceeds that  of  the  education  of  its  future 
citizens?  We  spend  on  our  army  and 
navy  a  quarter  of  a  billion  dollars,  which 
is  found  to  be  insufficient,  while  the  "total 
money  burden  of  crime  amounts  in  this 
country  to  the  enormous  sum  of  600  mil- 
lion dollars  a  year!" 

The  cost  of  crime  alone  is  so  enormous 
that  a  representative  of  the  Board  of 
Charities  of  one  of  our  Eastern  states 
considers  "the  entire  abolition  of  all  the 
penal  codes  and  the  complete  liberty  of 
the  criminal  class."  Our  civilization  can 
boast  of  the  city-slum,  the  abode  of  mis- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  17 

ery  and  crime,  the  gift  of  our  modern  in- 
dustrial progress,  wealth  and  prosperity. 
Professor  James  and  myself  were  over 
once  on  a  visit  to  a  charitable  institution 
for  mentally  defective.  With  his  clear 
eye  for  the  incongruities  and  absurdities 
of  life,  Professor  James  remarked  to  me 
that  idiots  and  imbeciles  were  given  the 
comforts,  in  fact,  the  luxuries  of  life,  while 
healthy  children,  able  boys  and  girls,  had 
to  struggle  for  a  livelihood.  Children 
under  fourteen  work  in  factories,  work  at 
a  wage  of  about  twenty-five  cents  a  day, 
and,  according  to  the  labor  bureau,  the 
daily  wage  of  the  factory  children  of  the 
South  is  often  as  low  as  fifteen  cents  and 
sometimes  falls  to  nine  cents.  In  many 
of  our  colleges  many  a  student  has  to  live 
on  the  verge  of  starvation,  freeze  in  a 
summer  overcoat  the  whole  winter  and 
warm  his  room  by  burning  newspapers  in 


18  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

the  grate.  We  are  charitable  and  help 
our  mediocrities,  imbeciles  and  idiots, 
while  we  neglect  our  talent  and  genius. 
We  have  a  blind  faith  that  genius,  like 
murder,  will  out.  We  know  of  success- 
ful talent,  but  we  do  not  know  of  the 
great  amount  of  unsuccessful  talent  and 
genius  that  has  gone  to  waste.  We  favor 
imbecility  and  slight  genius. 

One  of  the  physicians  of  the  institution 
overheard  our  conversation  and  attempted 
to  justify  his  work  by  an  argument  com- 
monly advanced  and  uncritically  ac- 
cepted— "Our  civilization,  our  Christian 
civilization  values  human  life.'*  Does 
our  civilization  really  value  human  life? 
The  infant  mortality  of  the  slums  of  our 
large  cities  and  the  factory  work  of  our 
young  children  do  not  seem  to  justify 
such  a  claim. 

The  loss  of  life  on  our  railways  is  as 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  19 

large  as  one  caused  by  a  national  war. 
Thus  the  number  of  persons  killed  on 
American  railways  during  a  period  of 
three  years  ending  June  30,  1900,  was 
about  22,000,  while  the  mortality  of 
British  forces,  including  death  from  dis- 
ease, during  three  years  of  the  South  Af- 
rican war  amounted  to  22,000.  In  1901, 
one  out  of  every  400  railway  employees 
was  killed  and  one  out  of  every  26  was 
injured.  In  1902,  2,969  employees  were 
killed  and  50,524  were  injured. 

Commenting  on  the  statistics  of  rail- 
way accidents,  Mr.  John  Graham  Brooks 
says:  "One  has  to  read  and  re-read 
these  figures  before  their  grewsome  sig- 
nificance is  in  the  least  clear.  If  we 
add  the  mining,  iron  and  lumbering  in- 
dustries,— portions  of  which  are  more  dan- 
gerous than  the  railroad, — some  concep- 
tion is  possible  of  the  mutilated  life  due 
to  machinery  as  it  is  now  run."  It  may 


20  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

also  be  of  interest  to  learn  that,  according 
to  the  calculation  made  by  a  representa- 
tive of  one  of  the  insurance  companies, 
more  than  a  million  and  a  half  are  annu- 
ally killed  and  injured  in  the  United 
States  alone. 

The  waste  of  human  life  is  in  fact 
greater  than  in  any  previous  age.  "Saul 
hath  slain  his  thousands,  but  David  his 
ten  thousands."  Think  of  our  modern 
warfare,  with  its  infernal  machines  of 
carnage,  mowing  down  more  men  in  a  day 
than  the  warlike  Assyrians  and  Romans, 
with  their  crude  bows,  arrows  and  cata- 
pults, could  destroy  in  a  century.  And 
is  not  our  country,  our  civilized  Christian 
society,  with  its  high  valuation  of  human 
life,  keeping  on  increasing  its  army  and 
navy,  and  perfecting  deadly  weapons  of 
slaughter  and  carnage?  What  about  the 
justice  dealt  out  by  Judge  Lynch  ?  From 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  21 

1882  to  1900  there  were  about  three  thou- 
sand lynchings!  What  about  our  grand 
imperial  policy?  What  about  our  dom- 
inance over  weak  and  ignorant  tribes, 
treated  in  no  gentle  way  by  the  armed 
fist  of  their  civilized  masters,  who  send 
to  the  benighted  heathens  their  mission- 
aries to  preach  religion  and  their  soldiers 
to  enforce  the  sale  of  narcotics  and  other 
civilizing  goods? 


IV 

WE  are  stock-blind  to  our  own  barbar- 
ities; we  do  not  realize  the  enormities  of 
our  life  and  consider  our  age  and  country 
as  civilized  and  enlightened.  We  censure 
the  faults  of  other  societies,  but  do  not 
notice  our  own.  Thus  Lecky,  in  describ- 
ing Roman  society,  says:  "The  gladia- 
torial games  form  indeed  the  one  feature 
which  to  a  modern  mind  is  almost  in- 
conceivable in  its  atrocity.  That  not  only 
men,  but  women,  in  an  advanced  period  of 
civilization, — men  and  women  who  not 
only  professed,  but  very  frequently  acted 
upon  a  high  code  of  morals — should  have 
made  the  carnage  of  men  their  habitual 
amusement,  that  all  this  should  have  con- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  23 

tinned  for  centuries  with  scarcely  a  pro- 
test, is  one  of  the  most  startling  facts  in 
moral  history.  It  is,  however,  perfectly 
normal,  while  it  opens  out  fields  of  eth- 
ical inquiry  of  a  very  deep,  though  pain- 
ful, character." 

As  in  modern  times,  oiir  college  author- 
ities justify  the  brutalities  of  football 
and  prize-fights,  so  in  ancient  times  the 
great  moralists  of  those  ages  justified 
their  gladiatorial  games.  Thus  the  great 
orator,  the  moralizing  philosopher,  Cicero, 
in  speaking  of  the  gladiatorial  games, 
tells  us:  "When  guilty  men  are  com- 
pelled to  fight,  no  better  discipline  against 
suffering  and  death  can  be  presented  to 
the  eye."  And  it  is  certainly  instructive 
for  us  to  learn  that  "the  very  men  who 
looked  down  with  delight,  when  the  sand 
of  the  arena  reddened  with  human  blood, 
made  the  theater  ring  with  applause  when 


24  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

Terence  in  his  famous  line  proclaimed  the 
brotherhood  of  men." 

One  feeble  protest  is  on  record,  a  protest 
coming  from  the  mother  of  civilization, 
from  ancient  Athens.  "When  an  attempt 
was  made  to  introduce  the  games  into 
Athens,  the  philosopher  Demonax  ap- 
pealed successfully  to  the  better  feelings 
of  the  people  by  exclaiming :  "You  must 
first  overthrow  the  altar  of  pity!" 

The  philosopher  Demonax  had  not  the 
compromising  spirit  of  the  modern  pro- 
fessor. Although  the  brutal  games  of 
our  youth  and  populace  need  a  Demonax, 
we  certainly  should  not  look  for  one  in  our 
colleges  and  universities.  Our  college  au- 
thorities assure  us  that  athletic  prestige  is 
indispensable  to  a  good  university.  In 
fact,  according  to  some  official  statements, 
football  teams  are  supposed  to  express  the 
superior  intellectual  activities  of  our  fore- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  25 

most  colleges.  Like  Cicero  of  old,  we 
claim  that  "our  games  are  good, — they 
train  men,  and  no  better  discipline  can  be 
presented  to  the  eye." 

The  fact  is,  man  is  bat-blind  to  the  evils 
of  the  environment  in  which  he  is  bred. 
He  takes  those  evils  as  a  matter  of  course, 
and  even  finds  good  reasons  to  justify 
them  as  edifying  and  elevating.  In  re- 
lation to  his  own  surroundings,  man  is  in 
the  primitive  condition  of  the  Biblical 
Adam, — he  is  not  conscious  of,  his  own 
moral  nakedness.  Six  days  in  the  week 
we  witness  and  uphold  the  wholesale  car- 
nage, national  and  international,  political, 
economical,  in  shops,  factories,  mines, 
railroads  and  on  the  battlefields,  while  on 
the  seventh  we  sing  hymns  to  the  God  of 
mercy,  love  and  peace. 

We  pick  up  the  first  newspapers  or 
popular  magazines  that  come  to  our  hand, 


26  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

and  we  read  of  wars,  slaughters,  murders, 
lynchings,  crimes  and  outrages  on  life  and 
liberty;  we  read  of  strikes,  lockouts,  of 
tales  of  starvation  and  of  frightful  infant 
mortality;  we  read  of  diseases  and  epi- 
demics ravaging  the  homes  of  our  working 
population;  we  read  of  corporation  in- 
iquities, of  frauds  and  corruption  of  our 
legislative  bodies,  of  the  control  of  politics 
by  the  criminal  classes  of  the  great  me- 
tropolis of  our  land.  We  read  of  all  that 
evil  and  corruption,  but  forget  them  next 
moment. 

Our  social  life  is  corrupt,  our  body  pol- 
itic is  eaten  through  with  cankers  and 
sores,  "the  whole  head  is  sick  and  the 
whole  heart  is  faint.  From  the  sole  of 
the  foot  even  unto  the  head,  there  is  no 
soundness  in  it;  but  wounds,  and  bruises 
and  putrefying  sores,"  and  yet  we  think 
we  are  a  civilized  people,  superior  to  all 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  27 

countries  and  to  all  ages.  "The  voice  of 
our  brother's  blood  crieth  unto  us  from 
the  ground."  How  can  we  be  so  callous? 
How  can  we  be  so  mole-blind  and  so  stone- 
deaf? 

The  truth  is,  we  have  but  a  thin  varnish 
of  humaneness,  glossing  over  a  rude  bar- 
barism. With  our  lips  we  praise  the  God 
of  love,  but  in  our  hearts  we  adore  the 
God  of  force.  How  much  physical  force 
is  worshipped  we  can  realize  from  the 
crowds  that  throng  the  games  of  base- 
ball, football,  prize-fights  and  boxing  ex- 
hibitions. They  go  into  tens  of  thou- 
sands. How  many  would  be  drawn  by  a 
St.  Paul,  an  Epictetus,  or  a  Socrates? 

The  newspaper,  the  mirror  of  our  social 
life,  is  filled  with  the  names  and  exploits 
of  our  magnates  of  high  finance,  our 
money-mongers  and  usurers.  Our  jour- 
nals teem  with  deeds  and  scandals  of  our 
refined  "smart  set"  set  up  as  patterns,  as 


28  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

ideals,  after  which  our  middle  class  so 
longingly  craves.  Like  the  Israelites  of 
old  we  worship  golden  calves  and  sa- 
cred bulls.  Our  daughters  yearn  after 
the  barbaric  shimmer  and  glitter  of  the 
bejewelled,  bespangled,  empty-minded, 
parasitic  females  of  "the  smart  set."  Our 
college  boys  admire  the  feats  of  the 
trained  athlete  and  scorn  the  work  of  the 
"grind."  Our  very  schoolboys  crave  for 
the  fame  of  a  Jeffries  and  a  Johnson.  If 
in  the  depths  of  space  there  is  some  solar 
system  inhabited  by  really  rational  beings, 
and  if  one  of  such  beings  should  by  some 
miracle  happen  to  visit  our  planet,  he 
would  no  doubt  turn  away  in  horror. 


WE  press  our  children  into  the  trium- 
phant march  of  our  industrial  Jugger- 
naut. Over  1,700,000  children  under  15 
years  of  age  toil  in  fields,  factories,  mines 
and  workshops.  The  slums  and  the  fac- 
tory cripple  the  energies  of  our  young 
generation.  The  slaughter  of  the  inno- 
cents and  the  sacrifice  of  our  children  to 
the  insatiable  Moloch  of  industry  exclude 
us  from  the  rank  of  civilized  society  and 
place  us  on  the  level  of  barbaric  nations. 
Our  educators  are  narrow-minded  ped- 
ants. They  are  occupied  with  the  dry 
bones  of  text-books,  the  sawdust  of  peda- 
gogics and  the  would-be  scientific  ex- 
periments of  educational  psychology;  they 


30  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

are  ignorant  of  the  real  vital  problems  of 
human  interests,  a  knowledge  of  which 
goes  to  make  the  truly  educated  man. 

About  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  Buckle  made  the  prediction  that 
no  war  was  any  more  to  occur  among  civi- 
lized nations.  Henceforth  peace  was  to 
reign  supreme.  "The  wolf  shall  dwell 
with  the  lamb,  and  the  leopard  shall  lie 
down  with  the  kid;  their  young  ones  shall 
lie  down  together,  and  the  lion  shall  eat 
straw  like  the  ox.  ...  Nations  shall 
beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares 
and  their  spears  into  pruning  hooks.  Na- 
tion shall  not  lift  up  sword  against  nation, 
nor  shall  they  learn  war  any  more."  This 
prophecy  was  rather  hasty.  We  have  had 
since  the  Civil  war,  the  Franco-Prussian 
war,  the  Spanish- American  war,  the  Boer 
war,  the  Russo-Japanese  war,  not  count- 
ing the  ceaseless  wars  of  extermination 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  31 

carried  on  by  civilized  nations  among 
the  various  semi-civilized  nations  and 
primitive  tribes.  Civilized  nations  do  not 
as  yet  beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares, 
but  keep  on  increasing  the  strength  of 
their  "armed  peace,"  and  are  ready  to  fight 
bloody  battles  in  the  quest  of  new  lands  and 
the  conquest  of  new  markets. 

In  spite  of  The  Hague  conference  of 
peace  convoked  by  the  peace-loving  Czar, 
no  other  age  has  had  such  large  standing 
armies  provided  with  such  costly  and  ef- 
ficient weapons  of  execution  ready  for  in- 
stant use.  The  red  spectre  still  stalks 
abroad  claiming  its  victims.  We  still  be- 
lieve in  the  baptism  of  fire  and  redemp- 
tion by  blood.  The  dogma  of  blood-re- 
demption is  still  at  the  basis  of  our  faith 
and,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  we 
brand  that  sacred  creed  on  the  minds  of 
the  young  generation. 


32  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

We  are  not  educated  to  see  and  under- 
stand the  wretchedness,  the  misery  of  our 
life, — the  evil  of  the  world  falls  on  the 
blind  spot  of  our  eye.  In  the  name  of 
evolution  and  the  survival  of  the  fittest, 
we  justify  the  grasping  arm  of  the  strong, 
and  even  glory  in  the  extermination  of 
the  weak.  The  weak,  we  say,  must  be 
weeded  out  by  the  processes  of  natural 
selection.  The  strong  are  the  best;  it  is 
right  that  they  should  survive  and  flourish 
like  a  green  bay  tree.  The  fact  is  that  we 
are  still  dominated  by  the  law  of  the 
jungle,  the  den  and  the  cave.  We  are 
still  wild  at  heart.  We  still  harken  to  the 
call  of  the  wild;  we  are  ruled  by  the  fist, 
the  claw  and  the  tooth. 

Love,  justice,  gentleness,  peace,  reason, 
sympathy  and  pity,  all  humane  feelings 
and  promptings  are  with  us  sentiments  of 
4 'unnatural"  or  supernatural  religion 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  33 

which  we  profess  in  our  churches,  but  in 
which  we  really  have  no  faith  as  good  for 
actual  life.  We  mistake  brutishness  for 
courage,  and  by  fight  and  by  war  we  train 
the  beast  in  man. 

All  humane  feelings  are  regarded  as  so 
many  hindrances  to  progress ;  they  favor, 
we  claim,  the  survival  of  the  weak.  We 
are,  of  course,  evolutionists,  and  believe 
most  firmly  in  progress.  We  believe  that 
the  luxuries  and  vices  of  the  strong  are 
conducive  to  prosperity,  and  that  the  evils 
of  life  by  the  automatic  grinding  of  that 
grind-organ  known  as  the  process  of  evo- 
lution somehow  lead  to  a  higher  civiliza- 
tion. 

When  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth 
century  Bernard  de  Mandeville  pro- 
claimed the  apparently  paradoxical  prin- 
ciple that  Private  Vices  are  Public  Bene- 
fits, the  academic  moralists  were  shocked 


34  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

at  such  profane  brutality.  Mandeville 
only  proclaimed  the  leading,  the  guiding 
principle  of  the  coming  age  of  industrial 
prosperity.  We  now  know  better.  Are 
we  not  evolutionists?  Have  we  not 
learned  that  progress  and  evolution  and 
the  improvement  of  the  race  are  brought 
about  by  the  fierce  struggle  for  existence, 
by  the  process  of  natural  selection,  by  the 
merciless  elimination  of  the  weak  and  by 
the  triumph  of  the  strong  and  the  fit? 
What  is  the  use  of  being  sentimental? 
Like  Brennus,  the  Gaul,  we  throw  our 
sword  on  the  scales  of  blinded  justice  and 
shout  triumphantly  "Vce  victisT 


VI 

WE  are  confirmed  optimists  and  sow  op- 
timism broadcast.  We  have  optimistic 
clubs  and  mental  scientists  and  Christian 
scientists, — all  afflicted  with  incurable 
ophthalmia  to  surrounding  evil  and  mis- 
ery. We  are  scientific,  we  are  evolution- 
ists, we  have  faith  in  the  sort  of  optimism 
taught  by  Leibnitz  in  his  famous  Theo- 
dicea.  We  are  the  Candides  of  our  or- 
acles, the  Panglosses.  You  may  possibly 
remember  what  Voltaire  writes  of  Pro- 
fessor Pangloss.  "Pangloss  used  to 
teach  the  science  of  metaphysico-theolo- 
go-cosmologo-noodleology.  He  demon- 
strated to  admiration  that  there  is  no  effect 
without  a  cause  and  that  this  is  the  best  of 

35 


36  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

all  possible  worlds.  It  has  been  proved, 
said  Pangloss,  that  things  cannot  be  other- 
wise than  they  are;  for  everything,  the 
end  for  which  everything  is  made,  is  nec- 
essarily the  best  end.  Observe  how  noses 
are  made  to  carry  spectacles,  and  specta- 
cles we  have  accordingly.  Everything 
that  is,  is  the  best  that  could  possibly  be." 
It  is  such  shallow  optimism  that  now  gains 
currency. 

Verily,  we  are  afflicted  with  mental 
cataract.  "If  we  should  bring  clearly 
to  a  man's  sight,"  says  Schopenhauer, 
"the  terrible  sufferings  and  miseries  to 
which  his  life  is  constantly  exposed,  he 
would  be  seized  with  horror,  and  if  we 
were  to  conduct  the  confirmed  optimist 
through  the  hospitals,  infirmaries,  and 
surgical  operating-rooms,  through  pris- 
ons, asylums,  torture-chambers  and  slave- 
kennels,  over  battlefields  and  places  of 
execution;  if  we  were  to  open  to  him  all 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  37 

the  dark  abodes  of  misery,  where  it  hides 
itself  from  the  glance  of  cold  curiosity,  he 
would  understand  at  last  the  nature  of 
this  best  of  possible  worlds." 

Schopenhauer  is  metaphysical,  pessi- 
mistic, but  he  is  certainly  not  blinded  by 
a  shallow  optimism  to  the  realities  of  life. 
Drunk  with  the  spirit  of  optimism,  we 
do  not  realize  the  degradation,  the  misery 
and  poverty  of  our  life.  Meanwhile  the 
human  genius,  the  genius  which  all  of  us 
possess,  languishes,  famishes,  and  perishes, 
while  the  brute  alone  emerges  in  triumph. 
We  are  so  overcome  by  the  faith  in  the 
transcendent,  optimistic  evolution  of  the 
good,  that  through  the  misty,  heavenly, 
angelic  visions,  we  do  not  discern  the 
cloven  hoof  of  the  devil. 

Professor  James  in  a  recent  address 
told  the  Radcliffe  graduates  that  the  aim 
of  a  college-education  is  "to  recognize  the 
good  man''  when  you  see  him.  This  ad- 


38  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

vice  may  be  good  for  Radcliffe  young 
ladies;  but,  fathers  and  mothers,  the  true 
education  of  life  is  the  recognition  of  evil 
wherever  it  is  met. 

The  Bible  begins  the  story  of  man  in  a 
paradise  of  ignorance  and  finishes  it  with 
his  tasting  of  the  fruits  of  the  forbidden 
tree  of  knowledge  of  good  and  evil. 
"And  the  eyes  of  them  both  were  opened 
and  they  knew  that  they  were  naked. 
And  the  Lord  God  said, — Behold,  the 
man  is  become  as  one  of  us  to  know  good 
and  evil,  and  now,  lest  he  put  forth  his 
hand  and  take  also  of  the  tree  of  life  and 
eat  and  live  for  ever.  Therefore,  the 
Lord  God  sent  him  forth  from  the  garden 
of  Eden.  So  he  drove  out  the  man." 
We  prefer  the  sinful,  mortal,  but  godlike 
man  with  his  knowledge  of  evil  to  the 
brutish  philistine  in  the  bliss  of  Elysium. 


VII 

IN  the  education  of  the  young  genera- 
tion the  purpose  of  the  nation  is  to  bring 
up  the  child  as  a  good  man,  as  a  liberal- 
minded  citizen,  devoted  soul  and  body  to 
the  interests  of  social  welfare.  This  pur- 
pose in  the  education  of  the  young  citizen 
is  of  the  utmost  importance  in  every  so- 
ciety, but  it  is  a  vital  need  in  a  democratic 
society.  We  do  not  want  narrow-minded 
patriots  devoted  to  party-factions,  nor  big- 
oted sectarians,  nor  greedy  entrepreneurs 
fastening  in  trusts,  like  so  many  barnacles, 
on  the  body-politic.  We  do  not  want 
ringleaders  and  mobs,  unscrupulous  bosses 
and  easily  led  voters.  What  we  need  is 
men  having  at  heart  the  welfare  of  their 
fellow-men. 


40  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

The  purpose  of  the  education  provided 
by  the  nation  for  its  young  generation  is 
the  rearing  of  healthy,  talented,  broad- 
minded  citizens.  We  need,  above  all, 
good  citizens,  active  and  intelligent,  with 
a  knowledge  of  life  and  with  a  delicate 
sense  of  discrimination  and  detection  of 
evil  in  all  its  protean  forms;  we  need 
strong-minded  citizens  with  grit  and 
courage  to  resist  oppression  and  root  out 
evil  wherever  it  is  found.  A  strong  sense 
of  recognition  of  evil  should  be  the  social 
sense  of  every  well-educated  citizen  as  a 
safeguard  of  social  and  national  life. 
The  principle  of  recognition  of  evil  under 
all  its  guises  is  at  the  basis  of  the  true  edu- 
cation of  man. 

Is  it  not  strange  that  this  vital  prin- 
ciple of  education,  the  recognition  of  evil, 
— a  fundamental  principle  with  the  great 
thinkers  of  humanity, — should  remain  so 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  41 

sadly  neglected  by  our  educators  and  pub- 
lic instructors?  Our  educators  are  owl- 
wise,  our  teachers  are  pedants  and  all  their 
ambition  is  the  turning  out  of  smooth, 
well-polished  philistines.  It  is  a  sad  case 
of  the  blind  leading  the  blind. 

It  is  certainly  unfortunate  that  the  fa- 
vored type  of  superintendent  of  our  pub- 
lic education  should  be  such  a  hopeless 
philistine,  possessed  of  all  the  conceit  of 
the  mediocre  business  man.  Routine  is 
his  ideal.  Originality  and  genius  are 
spurned  and  suppressed.  Our  school- 
superintendent  with  his  well-organized 
training-shop  is  proud  of  the  fact  that 
there  is  no  place  for  genius  in  our  schools. 

Unfortunate  and  degraded  is  the  nation 
that  has  handed  over  its  childhood  and 
youth  to  guidance  and  control  by  hide- 
bound mediocrity.  Our  school-managers 
are  respected  by  the  laity  as  great  educa- 


42  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

tors  and  are  looked  up  to  by  the  teachers 
as  able  business  men.  Their  merit  is 
routine,  discipline  and  the  hiring  of  cheap 
teaching-employees. 

It  is  certainly  a  great  misfortune  to  the 
nation  that  a  good  number  of  our  would- 
be  scientific  pedagogues  are  such  medioc- 
rities, with  so  absurd  an  exaggeration  of 
their  importance  that  they  are  well  satis- 
fied if  the  mass  of  their  pupils  turn  out 
exact  reproductions  of  the  silly  peda- 
gogue. What  can  be  expected  of  a  na- 
tion that  entrusts  the  fate  of  its  young 
generation  to  the  care  or  carelessness  of 
young  girls,  to  the  ire  of  old  maids,  and 
to  pettifogging  officials  with  their  educa- 
tional red  tape,  discipline  and  routine,— 
petty  bureaucrats  animated  with  a  hatred 
towards  talent  and  genius? 

The    goody-goody    schoolma'am,    the 
mand  arin-schoolmaster,     the     philistine- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  43 

pedagogue,  the  pedant- administrator  with 
his  business  capacities,  have  proved  them- 
selves incompetent  to  deal  with  the  edu- 
cation of  the  young.  They  stifle  talent, 
they  stupefy  the  intellect,  they  paralyze 
the  will,  they  suppress  genius,  they  be- 
numb the  faculties  of  our  children.  The 
educator,  with  his  pseudo-scientific, 
pseudo-psychological  pseudogogics,  can 
only  bring  up  a  set  of  philistines  with 
firm,  set  habits, — marionettes, — dolls. 

Business  is  put  above  learning,  admin- 
istration above  education,  discipline  and 
order  above  cultivation  of  genius  and  tal- 
ent. Our  schools  and  colleges  are  con- 
trolled by  business  men.  The  school- 
boards,  the  boards  of  trustees  of  almost 
every  school  and  college  in  the  country 
consist  mainly  of  manufacturers,  store- 
keepers, tradesmen,  bulls  and  bears  of 
Wall  street  and  the  market-place.  What 


44  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

wonder  that  they  bring  with  them  the 
ideals  and  methods  of  the  factory,  the 
store,  the  bank  and  the  saloon.  If  the 
saloon  controls  politics,  the  shop  controls 
education. 

Business  men  are  no  more  competent  to 
run  schools  and  colleges  than  astronomers 
are  fit  to  run  hotels  and  theaters.  Our 
whole  educational  system  is  vicious.  A 
popular  scientific  journal  entered  a  pro- 
test against  the  vulgarization  of  our  col- 
leges, the  department-store  trade  methods 
of  our  universities,  but  to  no  avail.  The 
popular  hero,  the  administrative  business 
superintendent  still  holds  sway,  and  poi- 
sons the  sources  of  our  social  life  by  de- 
basing the  very  foundation  of  our  na- 
tional education. 


VIII 

FROM  time  to  time  the  " educational" 
methods  of  our  philistine  teachers  are 
brought  to  light.  A  girl  is  forced  by  a 
schoolma'am  of  one  of  our  large  cities  to 
stay  in  a  corner  for  hours,  because  she 
unintentionally  transgressed  against  the 
barrack-discipline  of  the  school-regula- 
tions. When  the  parents  became  afraid 
of  the  girl's  health  and  naturally  took 
her  out  of  school,  the  little  girl  was 
dragged  before  the  court  by  the  truant 
officer.  Fortunately  "the  judge  turned  to 
the  truant  officer  and  asked  him  how  the 
girl  could  be  a  truant,  if  she  had  been  sus- 
pended. He  didn't  believe  in  breaking 
children's  wills." 

45 


46  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

In  another  city  a  pupil  of  genius  was 
excluded  from  school  because  "he  did  not 
fall  in  with  the  system"  laid  out  by  the 
"very  able  business-superintendent."  A 
schoolmistress  conceives  the  happy  idea  of 
converting  two  of  her  refractory  pupils 
into  pin-cushions  for  the  edification  of 
her  class.  An  "educational"  administra- 
tive superintendent  of  a  large,  prosperous 
community  told  a  lady  who  brought  to 
him  her  son,  an  extraordinarily  able  boy, 
"I  shall  not  take  your  boy  into  my  high- 
school,  in  spite  of  his  knowledge."  When 
the  mother  asked  him  to  listen  to  her,  he 
lost  patience  and  told  her  with  all  the 
force  of  his  school-authority,  "Madam, 
put  a  rope  around  his  neck,  weigh  him 
well  down  with  bricks!" 

A  principal  of  a  high  school  in  one  of 
the  prominent  New  England  towns  dis- 
misses a  highly  talented  pupil  because,  to 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  4-7 

quote  verbatim  from  the  original  school 
document,  "He  is  not  amenable  to  the  dis- 
cipline of  the  school,  as  his  school  life  has 
been  too  short  to  establish  him  in  the  habit 
of  obedience."  "His  intellect,"  the  prin- 
cipal's official  letter  goes  on  to  say,  "re- 
mains a  marvel  to  us,  but  we  do  not  feel, 
and  in  this  I  think  I  speak  for  all, 
that  he  is  in  the  right  place."  In  other 
words,  in  the  opinion  of  those  remarkable 
pedagogues,  educators  and  teachers,  the 
school  is  not  the  right  place  for  talent  and 
genius ! 

A  superintendent  of  schools  in  lectur- 
ing before  an  audience  of  "subordinate 
teachers"  told  them  emphatically  that 
there  was  no  place  for  genius  in  our 
schools.  Dear  old  fogies,  one  can  well 
understand  your  indignation!  Here  we 
have  worked  out  some  fine  methods,  clever 
rules,  beautiful  systems  and  then  comes 


48  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

genius  and  upsets  the  whole  structure! 
It  is  a  shame!  Genius  cannot  fit  into  the 
pigeon-holes  of  the  office  desk.  Choke 
genius,  and  things  will  move  smoothly  in 
the  school  and  the  office. 

Not  long  ago  we  were  informed  by  one 
of  those  successful  college-mandarins, 
lionized  by  office-clerks,  superintendents 
and  tradesmen,  that  he  could  measure  ed- 
ucation by  the  foot-rule!  Our  Regents 
are  supposed  to  raise  the  level  of  educa- 
tion by  a  vicious  system  of  examination 
and  coaching,  a  system  which  Professor 
James,  in  a  private  conversation  with 
me,  has  aptly  characterized  as  "idiotic." 

Our  schools  brand  their  pupils  by  a  sys- 
tem of  marks,  while  our  foremost  colleges 
measure  the  knowledge  and  education  of 
their  students  by  the  number  of  "points" 
passed.  The  student  may  pass  either  in 
Logic  or  Blacksmithing.  It  does  not 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  49 

matter  which,  provided  he  makes  up  a  cer- 
tain number  of  "points"! 

College-committees  refuse  admission 
to  young  students  of  genius,  because  "it 
is  against  the  policy  and  the  principles  of 
the  university."  College-professors  ex- 
pel promising  students  from  the  lecture- 
room  for  "the  good  of  the  class  as  a 
whole,"  because  the  students  "happen  to 
handle  their  hats  in  the  middle  of  a  lec- 
ture." This,  you  see,  interferes  with 
class  discipline.  Fiat  justitia,  pereat 
inundus.  Let  genius  perish,  provided  the 
system  lives.  Why  not  suppress  all  ge- 
nius, as  a  disturbing  element,  for  "the 
good  of  the  classes,"  for  the  weal  of  the 
commonwealth?  Education  of  man  and 
cultivation  of  genius,  indeed!  This  is  not 
school  policy. 

We  school  and  drill  our  children  and 
youth  in  schoolma'am  mannerism,  school- 


50  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

master  mind-ankylosis,  school-superin- 
tendent stiff -joint  ceremonialism,  factory 
regulations  and  office-discipline.  We  give 
our  pupils  and  students  artisan-inspira- 
tion and  business-spirituality.  Original- 
ity is  suppressed.  Individuality  is  crushed. 
Mediocrity  is  at  a  premium.  That  is  why 
our  country  has  such  clever  business  men, 
such  cunning  artisans,  such  resourceful 
politicians,  such  adroit  leaders  of  new 
cults,  but  no  scientists,  no  artists,  no 
philosophers,  no  statesmen,  no  genuine 
talent  and  no  true  genius. 

School-teachers  have  in  all  ages  been 
mediocre  in  intellect  and  incompetent. 
Leibnitz  is  regarded  as  a  dullard  and 
Newton  is  considered  as  a  blockhead. 
Never,  however,  in  the  history  of  mankind 
have  school  teachers  fallen  to  such  a  low 
level  of  mediocrity  as  in  our  times  and  in 
our  country.  For  it  is  not  the  amount  of 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  51 

knowledge  that  counts  in  true  education, 
but  originality  and  independence  of 
thought  that  are  of  importance  in  educa- 
tion. But  independence  and  originality 
of  thought  are  just  the  very  elements  that 
are  suppressed  hy  our  modern  barrack- 
system  of  education.  No  wonder  that 
military  men  claim  that  the  best  "educa- 
tion" is  given  in  military  schools. 

We  are  not  aware  that  the  incubus  of 
officialdom,  and  the  succubus  of  bureau- 
cracy have  taken  possession  of  our  schools. 
The  red  tape  of  officialdom,  like  a  poison- 
ous weed,  grows  luxuriantly  in  our  schools 
and  chokes  the  life  of  our  young  genera- 
tion. Instead  of  growing  into  a  people 
of  great  independent  thinkers,  the  nation 
is  in  danger  of  fast  becoming  a  crowd  of 
well-drilled,  well-disciplined,  commonplace 
individuals,  with  strong  philistine  habits 
and  notions  of  hopeless  mediocrity. 


52  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

In  levelling  education  to  mediocrity  we 
imagine  that  we  uphold  the  democratic 
spirit  of  our  institutions.  Our  American 
sensibilities  are  shocked  when  the  presi- 
dent of  one  of  our  leading  colleges  dares 
to  recommend  to  his  college  that  it  should 
cease  catering  to  the  average  student. 
We  think  it  un-American,  rank  treason 
to  our  democratic  spirit  when  a  college 
president  has  the  courage  to  proclaim  the 
principle  that  "To  form  the  mind  and 
character  of  one  man  of  marked  talent, 
not  to  say  genius,  would  be  worth  more  to 
the  community  which  he  would  serve  than 
the  routine  training  of  hundreds  of  un- 
dergraduates." 

We  are  optimistic,  we  believe  in  the 
pernicious  superstition  that  genius  needs 
no  help,  that  talent  will  take  care  of  it- 
self. Our  kitchen  clocks  and  dollar  time- 
pieces need  careful  handling,  but  our 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  53 

chronometers  and  astronomical  clocks  can 
run  by  themselves. 

The  truth  is,  however,  that  the  purpose 
of  the  school  and  the  college  is  not  to  cre- 
ate an  intellectual  aristocracy,  but  to  edu- 
cate, to  bring  out  the  individuality,  the 
originality,  the  latent  powers  of  talent 
and  genius  present  in  what  we  unfortu- 
nately regard  as  "the  average  student." 
Follow  Mill's  advice.  Instead  of  aiming 
at  athletics,  social  connections,  vocations 
and  generally  at  the  professional  art  of 
money-making,  "Aim  at  something  noble. 
Make  your  system  such  that  a  great  man 
may  be  formed  by  it,  and  there  will  be  a 
manhood  in  your  little  men,  of  which  you 
do  not  dream." 

Awaken  in  early  childhood  the  crit- 
ical spirit  of  man;  awaken,  early  in 
the  child's  life,  love  of  knowledge,  love 
of  truth,  of  art  and  literature  for  their 


54,  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

own  sake,  and  you  arouse  man's  genius. 
We  have  average  mediocre  students,  be- 
cause we  have  mediocre  teachers,  depart- 
ment-store superintendents,  clerkly  prin- 
cipals and  deans  with  bookkeepers'  souls, 
because  our  schools  and  colleges  deliber- 
ately aim  at  mediocrity. 

Bibot  in  describing  the  degenerated 
Byzantine  Greeks  tells  us  that  their  lead- 
ers were  mediocrities  and  their  great 
men  commonplace  personalities.  Is  the 
American  nation  drifting  in  the  same  di- 
rection? It  was  the  system  of  cultiva- 
tion of  independent  thought  that  awak- 
ened the  Greek  mind  to  its  highest  achieve- 
ments in  arts,  science  and  philosophy;  it 
was  the  deadly  Byzantine  bureaucratic 
red  tape  with  its  cut-and-dried  theological 
discipline  that  dried  up  the  sources  of 
Greek  genius.  We  are  in  danger  of 
building  up  a  Byzantine  empire  with  large 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  55 

institutions  and  big  corporations,  but 
with  small  minds  and  dwarfed  individuali- 
ties. Like  the  Byzantines  we  begin  to 
value  administration  above  individuality 
and  official,  red-tape  ceremonialism  above 
originality. 

We  wish  even  to  turn  our  schools  into 
practical  school-shops.  We  shall  in  time 
become  a  nation  of  well-trained  clerks  and 
clever  artisans.  The  time  is  at  hand  when 
we  shall  be  justified  in  writing  over  the 
gates  of  our  school-shops  "mediocrity 
made  here!" 


IX 

I  ASSUME  that  as  liberal  men  and  women 
you  have  no  use  for  the  process  of  cram- 
ming and  stuffing  of  college-geese  and 
mentally  indolent,  morally  obtuse  and 
religiously  "cultured"  prigs  and  philis- 
tines,  but  that  you  realize  that  your  true 
vocation  is  to  get  access  to  the  latent  ener- 
gies of  your  children,  to  stimulate  their  re- 
serve energies  and  educate,  bring  to  light, 
man's  genius.  The  science  of  psychopath- 
ology  now  sets  forth  a  fundamental  prin- 
ciple which  is  not  only  of  the  utmost  im- 
portance in  psychotherapeutics,  but  also 
in  the  domain  of  education;  it  is  the  prin- 
ciple of  stored  up,  dormant,  reserve- 
energy, — the  principle  of  potential,  sub- 
conscious, reserve  energy. 

56 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  57 

It  is  claimed  on  good  evidence,  biolog- 
ical, physiological  and  psychopathological, 
that  man  possesses  large  stores  of  unused 
energy  which  the  ordinary  stimuli  of  life 
are  not  only  unable  to  reach,  but  even 
tend  to  inhibit.  Unusual  combinations  of 
circumstances,  however,  radical  changes 
of  the  environment,  often  unloose  the  in- 
hibitions brought  about  by  the  habitual 
narrow  range  of  man's  interests  and  sur- 
roundings. Such  unloosening  of  inhibi- 
tions helps  to  release  fresh  supplies  of  re- 
serve energy.  It  is  not  the  place  here  to 
discuss  this  fundamental  principle;  I  can 
only  state  it  in  the  most  general  way,  and 
give  its  general  trend  in  the  domain  of 
education. 

You  have  heard  the  psychologizing  ed- 
ucator advise  the  formation  of  good,  fixed, 
stable  habits  in  early  life.  Now  I  want 
to  warn  you  against  the  dangers  of  such 


58  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

unrestricted  advice.  Fixed  adaptations, 
stable  habits,  tend  to  raise  the  thresholds 
of  mental  life,  tend  to  inhibit  the  libera- 
tion, the  output  of  reserve-energy. 
Avoid  routine.  Do  not  let  your  pupils 
fall  into  the  ruts  of  habits  and  customs. 
Do  not  let  even  the  best  of  habits  harden 
beyond  the  point  of  further  possible  modi- 
fication. 

Where  there  is  a  tendency  towards 
formation  of  over-abundant  mental  car- 
tilage, set  your  pupils  to  work  under 
widely  different  circumstances.  Con- 
front them  with  a  changed  set  of  condi- 
tions. Keep  them  on  the  move.  Sur- 
prise them  by  some  apparently  paradoxi- 
cal relations  and  strange  phenomena. 
Do  not  let  them  settle  down  to  one  definite 
set  of  actions  or  reactions.  Remember 
that  rigidity,  like  sclerosis,  induration  of 
tissue,  means  decay  of  originality,  destruc- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  59 

tion  of  man's  genius.  With  solidified  and 
unvariable  habits  not  only  does  the  re- 
serve energy  become  entirely  inaccessible, 
but  the  very  individuality  is  extinguished. 

Do  not  make  of  our  children  a  nation  of 
philistines.  Why  say,  you  make  man  in 
your  own  image?  Do  not  make  your 
schools  machine-shops,  turning  out  on  one 
uniform  pattern  so  much  mediocrity  per 
year.  Cultivate  vanability.  The  tend- 
ency towards  variability  is  the  most  pre- 
cious part  of  a  good  education.  Beware 
of  the  philistine  with  his  set,  stable  habits. 

The  important  principle  in  education  is 
not  so  much  formation  of  habits  as  the 
power  of  their  re-formation.  The  power 
of  breaking  up  habits  is  by  far  the  more 
essential  factor  of  a  good  education.  It 
is  in  this  power  of  breaking  down  habits 
that  we  can  find  the  key  for  the  unlock- 
ing of  the  otherwise  inaccessible  stores  of 


60  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

subconscious  reserve  energy.  The  culti- 
vation of  the  power  of  habit-disintegra- 
tion is  what  constitutes  the  proper  educa- 
tion of  man's  genius* 

*A  well  known  editor  of  one  of  the  academic  Journals 
on  Educational  Psychology  writes  to  me  as  follows: 

"Your  remarks  on  the  avoidance  of  routine  would 
be  like  a  red  rag  to  a  bull  for  a  number  of  educa- 
tors who  are  emphasizing  the  importance  of  habit  for- 
mation in  education  at  present." 


THE  power  of  breaking  down  or  dissolv- 
ing habits  depends  on  the  amount  and 
strength  of  the  aqua  fortis  of  the  intellect. 
The  logical  and  critical  activities  of  the 
individual  should  be  cultivated  with  spe- 
cial care.  The  critical  self,  as  we  may 
put  it,  should  have  control  over  the  auto- 
matic and  the  subconscious.  For  the  sub- 
conscious has  been  shown  to  form  the 
fertile  soil  for  the  breeding  of  the  most 
dangerous  germs  of  mental  disease,  epi- 
demics, plagues  and  pestilences  in  their 
worst  forms.  We  should  try  to  develop 
the  individual's  critical  abilities  in  early 
childhood,  not  permitting  the  suggestible 
subconsciousness  to  predominate,  and  to 


61 


62  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

become  overrun  with  noxious  weeds  and 
pests. 

We  should  be  very  careful  with  the 
child's  critical  self,  as  it  is  weak  and  has 
little  resistance.  We  should,  therefore, 
avoid  all  dominating  authority  and  cate- 
gorical imperative  commands.  Autocratic 
authority  cultivates  in  the  child  the  predis- 
position to  abnormal  suggestibility,  to 
hypnotic  states,  and  leads  towards  the 
dominance  of  the  subconscious  with  its 
train  of  pernicious  tendencies  and  delete- 
rious results. 

There  is  a  period  in  the  child's  life 
between  the  ages  of ^five  and  ten  when 
he  is  very  inquisitive,  asking  all  kinds 
of  questions.  It  is  the  age  of  discus- 
sion in  the  child.  This  inquisitiveness 
and  discussion  should  by  all  means  be  en- 
couraged and  fostered.  We  should  aid 
the  development  of  the  spirit  of  inquisi- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  63 

tiveness  and  curiosity  in  the  child.  For 
this  is  the  acquisition  of  control  over  the 
stored-up,  latent  energies  of  man's  genius. 

We  should  not  arrest  the  child's  ques- 
tioning spirit,  as  we  are  often  apt  to  do, 
but  should  strongly  encourage  the  appar- 
ently meddlesome  and  troublesome  search- 
ing and  prying  and  scrutinizing  of  what- 
ever interests  the  child.  Everything 
should  be  open  to  the  child's  searching  in- 
terest; nothing  should  be  suppressed  and 
tabooed  as  too  sacred  for  examination. 
The  spirit  of  inquiry,  the  genius  of  man, 
is  more  sacred  than  any  abstract  belief, 
dogma  and  creed. 

A  rabbi  came  to  ask  my  advice  about 
the  education  of  his  little  boy.  My  ad- 
vice was:  "Teach  him  not  to  be  a  Jew." 
The  man  of  God  departed  and  never  came 
again.  The  rabbi  did  not  care  for  edu- 
cation, but  for  faith.  He  did  not  wish 


64  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

his  boy  to  become  a  man,  but  to  be  a  Jew. 
The  most  central,  the  most  crucial  part 
of  the  education  of  man's  genius  is  the 
knowledge,  the  recognition  of  evil  in  all 
its  protean  forms  and  innumerable  dis- 
guises, intellectual,  aesthetic  and  moral, 
such  as  fallacies,  sophisms,  ugliness,  de- 
formity, prejudice,  superstition,  vice  and 
depravity.  Do  not  be  afraid  to  discuss 
these  matters  with  the  child.  For  the 
knowledge,  the  recognition  of  evil  does 
not  only  possess  the  virtue  of  immuniza- 
tion of  the  child's  mind  against  all  evil, 
but  furnishes  the  main  power  for  habit- 
disintegration  with  consequent  release  and 
control  of  potential  reserve  energy,  of 
manifestations  of  human  genius.  When 
a  man  becomes  contented  and  ceases  to 
notice  the  evils  of  life,  as  is  done  by  some 
modern  religious  sects,  he  loses  his  hold  on 
the  powers  of  man's  genius,  he  loses  touch 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  65 

with  the  throbbing  pulse  of  humanity,  he 
loses  hold  on  reality  and  falls  into  sub- 
human groups. 

The  purpose  of  education,  of  a  liberal 
education,  is  not  to  live  in  a  fool's  paradise, 
or  to  go  through  the  world  in  a  post-hyp- 
notic state  of  negative  hallucinations. 
The  true  aim  of  a  liberal  education  is,  as 
the  Scriptures  put  it,  to  have  the  eyes 
opened, — to  be  free  from  all  delusions, 
illusions,  from  the  fata  morgana  of  life. 
We  prize  a  liberal  education,  because  it 
liberates  us  from  subjection  to  supersti- 
tious fears,  delivers  us  from  the  narrow 
bonds  of  prejudice,  from  the  exalted  or 
depressing  delusions  of  moral  paresis,  in- 
tellectual dementia-praecox,  and  religious 
paranoia^>  A  liberal  education  liberates 
us  from  the  enslavement  to  the  degrading 
influence  of  all  idol-worship. 

In  the  education  of  man  do  not  play  on 


66  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

his  subconscious  sense  by  deluding  him  by 
means  of  hypnotic  and  post-hypnotic  sug- 
gestions of  positive  and  negative  hallu- 
cinations, with  misty  and  mystic,  beatific 
visions.  Open  his  eyes  to  undisguised  re- 
ality. Teach  him,  show  him  how  to  strip 
the  real  from  its  unessential  wrappings 
and  adornments  and  see  things  in  their 
nakedness.  Open  the  eyes  of  your  chil- 
dren so  that  they  shall  see,  understand 
and  face  courageously  the  evils  of  life. 
Then  will  you  do  your  duty  as  parents, 
then  will  you  give  your  children  the 
proper  education. 


XI 

I  HAVE  spoken  of  the  fundamental  law 
of  early  education.  The  question  is  "how 
early?"  There  are,  of  course,  children 
who  are  backward  in  their  development. 
This  backwardness  may  either  be  congen- 
ital or  may  be  due  to  some  overlooked 
pathological  condition  that  may  be  easily 
remedied  by  proper  treatment.  In  the 
large  majority  of  children,  however,  the 
beginning  of  education  is  between  the 
second  and  third  year.  It  is  at  that  time 
that  the  child  begins  to  form  his  interests. 
It  is  at  that  critical  period  that  we  have 
to  seize  the  opportunity  to  guide  the 
child's  formative  energies  in  the  right 
channels.  To  delay  is  a  mistake  and  a 

67 


68  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

wrong  to  the  child.  We  can  at  that  early 
period  awaken  a  love  of  knowledge  which 
will  persist  through  life.  The  child  will 
as  eagerly  play  in  the  game  of  knowledge 
as  he  now  spends  the  most  of  his  energies 
in  meaningless  games  and  objectless  silly 
sports. 

We  claim  we  are  afraid  to  force  the 
child's  mind.  We  claim  we  are  afraid 
to  strain  his  brain  prematurely.  This  is 
an  error.  In  directing  the  course  of  the 
use  of  the  child's  energies  we  do  not  force 
the  child.  If  you  do  not  direct  the  ener- 
gies in  the  right  course,  the  child  will 
waste  them  in  the  wrong  direction.  The 
same  amount  of  mental  energy  used  in 
those  silly  games,  which  we  think  are  spe- 
cially adapted  for  the  childish  mind,  can 
be  directed,  with  lasting  benefit,  to  the  de- 
velopment of  his  interests  in  intellectual 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  69 

activity  and  love  of  knowledge.  The 
child  will  learn  to  play  at  the  game  of 
knowledge-acquisition  with  the  same  ease, 
grace  and  interest  as  he  is  showing  now  in 
his  nursery-games  and  physical  exercises. 


XII 

ARISTOTLE  laid  it  down  as  a  self-evident 
proposition  that  all  Hellenes  love  knowl- 
edge. This  was  true  of  the  national  gen- 
ius of  the  ancient  Greeks.  The  love  of  wis- 
dom is  the  pride  of  the  ancient  Greek  in 
contradistinction  to  the  barbarian,  who 
does  not  prize  knowledge.  We  still  be- 
long to  the  barbarians.  Our  children,  our 
pupils,  our  students  have  no  love  of  knowl- 
edge. 

The  ancient  Greeks  knew  the  value  of 
a  good  education  and  understood  its 
fundamental  elements.  They  laid  great 
stress  on  early  education  and  they  knew 
how  to  develop  man's  mental  energies, 
without  fear  of  injury  to  the  brain  and 

70 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  71 

physical  constitution.  The  Greeks  were 
not  afraid  of  thought,  that  it  might  in- 
jure the  brain.  They  were  strong  men, 
great  thinkers. 

The  love  of  knowledge,  the  love  of  truth 
for  its  own  sake,  is  entirely  neglected  in 
our  modern  schemes  of  education.  In- 
stead of  training  men  we  train  mechanics, 
artisans  and  shopkeepers.  We  turn  our 
national  schools,  high  schools  and  univer- 
sities into  trade-schools  and  machine-shops. 
The  school,  whether  lower  or  higher,  has 
now  one  purpose  in  view,  and  that  is  the 
training  of  the  pupil  in  the  art  of  money- 
making.  Is  it  a  wonder  that  the  result 
is  a  low  form  of  mediocrity,  a  dwarfed  and 
crippled  specimen  of  humanity? 

Open  the  reports  of  our  school  superin- 
tendents and  you  find  that  the  illustrations 
setting  forth  the  prominent  work  per- 
formed by  the  school  represent  carpentry, 


72  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

shoemaking,  blacksmithing,  bookkeeping, 
typewriting,  dressmaking,  millinery  and 
cookery.  One  wonders  whether  it  is  the 
report  of  a  factory  inspector,  the  "scien- 
tific" advertisement  of  some  instrument- 
maker  or  machine-shop,  a  booklet  of  some 
popular  hotel,  or  an  extensive  circular  of 
some  large  department-store.  Is  this 
what  our  modern  education  consists  in? 
Is  the  aim  of  the  nation  to  form  at  its  ex- 
pense vast  reserve  armies  of  skilled  me- 
chanics, great  numbers  of  well-trained 
cooks  and  well-behaved  clerks  ?^Is  the 
purpose  of  the  nation  to  form  cheap 
skilled  labor  for  the  manufacturer,  or  is 
the  aim  of  society  to  form  intelligent,  edu- 
cated citizens  ?V 

The  high-school  and  college  courses 
advised  by  the  professors  and  elected  by 
the  student  are  with  reference  to  the  voca- 
tion in  life,  to  business  and  to  trade.  Our 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  73 

schools,  our  high  schools,  our  colleges  and 
our  universities  are  all  animated  with  the 
same  sordid  aim  of  giving  electives  for 
early  specialization  in  the  art  of  money- 
getting.  We  may  say  with  Mill  that  our 
schools  and  colleges  give  no  true  educa- 
tion, no  true  culture.  We  drift  to  the 
status  of  Egypt  and  India  with  their 
castes  of  early  trained  mechanics,  profes- 
sionals and  shopkeepers.  Truly  educated 
men  we  shall  have  none.  We  shall  be- 
come a  nation  of  narrow-minded  philis- 
tines,  well  contented  with  their  mediocrity. 
The  savage  compresses  the  skull  of  the  in- 
fant, while  we  flatten  the  brain  and  cramp 
the  mind  of  our  young  generation. 


XIII 

THE  great  thinker,  John  Stuart  Mill, 
insists  that  "the  great  business  of  every 
rational  being  is  the  strengthening  and 
enlarging  of  his  own  intellect  and  charac- 
ter. The  empirical  knowledge  which  the 
world  demands,  which  is  the  stock  in  trade 
of  money-getting,  we  would  leave  the 
world  to  provide  for  itself."  We  must 
make  our  system  of  education  such  "that 
a  great  man  may  be  formed  by  it,  and 
there  will  be  a  manhood  in  your  little  men 
of  which  you  do  not  dream.  We  must 
have  a  system  of  education  capable  of 
forming  great  minds."  Education  must 
aim  at  the  bringing  out  of  the  genius  in 
man.  Do  we  achieve  such  aim  by  the 

74 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  75 

formation  of  philistine-specialists  and 
young  petty-minded  artisans? 

"The  very  cornerstone  of  an  educa- 
tion," Mill  tells  us,  "intended  to  form 
great  minds,  must  be  the  recognition  of 
the  principle,  that  the  object  is  to  call 
forth  the  greatest  possible  quantity  of  in- 
tellectual power,  and  to  inspire  the  intens- 
est  love  of  truth;  and  this  without  a  par- 
ticle of  regard  to  the  results  to  which  the 
exercise  of  that  power  may  lead."  With 
us  the  only  love  of  truth  is  the  one  that 
leads  to  the  shop,  the  bank  and  the  count- 
ing-house. 

The  home  controls  the  school  and  the 
college.  As  long  as  the  home  is  domi- 
nated by  commercial  ideals,  the  school  will 
turn  out  mediocre  tradesmen. 

This,  however,  is  one  of  the  character- 
istic types  of  the  American  home:  the 
mother  thinks  of  dresses,  .fashions  and  par- 


76  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

ties.  The  daughter  twangs  and  thrums 
on  the  piano,  makes  violent  attempts  at 
singing  that  sound  as  "the  crackling  of 
thorns  under  a  pot,"  is  passionately  fond 
of  shopping,  dressing  and  visiting.  Both, 
mother  and  daughter,  love  society,  show 
and  gossip.  The  father  works  in  some 
business  or  at  some  trade  and  loves  sports 
and  games.  Not  a  spark  of  refinement 
and  culture,  not  a  redeeming  ray  of  love 
of  knowledge  and  of  art,  lighting  up  the 
commonplace  and  frivolous  life  of  the 
family.  What  wonder  that  the  children 
of  ten  and  eleven  can  hardly  read  and 
write,  are  little  brutes  and  waste  away 
their  precious  life  of  childhood  in  the  close, 
dusty,  overheated  rooms  *  of  the  early 
grades  of  some  elementary  school?  Com- 
mercial mediocrity  is  raised  at  home  and 
cultivated  in  the  school. 

"As  a  means  of  educating  the  many, 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  77 

the  universities  are  absolutely  null,"  ex- 
claims Mill.  The  attainments  of  any 
kind  required  for  taking  all  the  de- 
grees conferred  by  these  bodies  are,  at 
Cambridge,  utterly  contemptible."  Our 
American  schools,  with  their  ideals  of 
money-earning  capacities,  our  colleges 
glorying  in  their  athletics,  football  teams 
and  courses  for  professional  and  business 
specializations  would  have  been  regarded 
by  Mill  as  below  contempt. 

What  indeed  is  the  worth  of  an  educa- 
tion that  does  not  create  even  as  much  as 
an  ordinary  respect  for  learning  and  love 
of  truth,  and  that  prizes  knowledge  in 
terms  of  hard  cash?  What  is  the  educa- 
tional worth  of  a  college  or  of  a  university 
which  suppresses  its  most  gifted  students 
by  putting  them  under  the  ban  of  disor- 
derly behavior,  because  of  not  conforming 
to  commonplace  mannerisms?  What  is 


78  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

the  educational  value  of  a  university  which 
is  but  a  modern  edition  of  a  gladiatorial 
school  with  a  smattering  of  the  humani- 
ties? What  is  the  educational  value  of  an 
institution  of  learning  that  expels  its  best 
students  because  they  "attract  more  at- 
tention than  their  professors"?  What  is 
the  intellectual  level  of  a  college  that 
expels  from  its  courses  the  ablest  of  its 
students  for  some  slight  infringement,  and 
that  an  involuntary  one,  under  the  pre- 
text that  it  is  done  for  the  sake  of  class- 
discipline,  "for  the  general  good  of  the 
class"?  What  travesty  on  education  is  a 
system  that  suppresses  genius  in  the  inter- 
est of  mediocrity?  What  is  the  cultural, 
the  humanistic  value  of  an  education  that 
puts  a  prize  on  mediocrity? 


XIV 

DISCIPLINE,  fixed  habits  approved  by  the 
pedagogue  are  specially  enforced  in  our 
schools.  To  this  may  be  added  some 
"culture"  in  the  art  of  money-getting  in 
the  case  of  the  boys,  while  in  the  case  of 
girls  the  sesthetic  training  of  millinery 
and  dressmaking  may  be  included.  The 
colleges,  in  addition  to  class-discipline 
looked  after  by  the  professors  and  col- 
lege-authorities, are  essentially  an  organi- 
zation of  hasty-pudding  clubs,  football 
associations  and  athletic  corporations. 
What  is  the  use  of  a  college  if  not  for  its 
games?  Many  regard  the  college  as  use- 
ful for  the  formation  of  business  acquaint- 
ances in  later  life.  Others  again  consider 


79 


80  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

the  college  a  good  place  for  learning  fine 
manners.  In  other  words,  the  college  and 
the  school  are  for  athletics,  good  manners, 
business  companionship,  mechanical  arts 
and  money-getting.  They  are  for  any- 
thing but  education. 

We  have  become  so  used  to  college  ath- 
letics that  it  appears  strange  and  possibly 
absurd  to  demand  of  a  college  the  culti- 
vation of  man's  genius.  Who  expects  to 
find  an  intellectual  atmosphere  among  the 
great  body  of  our  college  undergraduates? 
Who  expects  of  our  schools  and  colleges 
true  culture  and  the  cultivation  of  a  taste 
for  literature,  art  and  science?  A  dean, 
an  unusually  able  man,  of  one  of  the 
prominent  Eastern  colleges  tells  me  that 
he  and  his  friends  are  very  pessimistic 
about  his  students  and  especially  about  the 
great  body  of  undergraduate  students. 
Literature,  art,  science  have  no  interest 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  81 

for  the  student;  games  and  athletics  fill 
his  mental  horizon. 

In  the  training  of  our  children,  in  the 
education  of  our  young,  we  think  that 
discipline,  obedience  to  paternal  and  ma- 
ternal commands,  whether  rational  or  ab- 
surd, are  of  the  utmost  importance.  We 
do  not  realize  that  in  such  a  scheme  of 
training  we  fail  to  cultivate  the  child's 
critical  faculties,  but  only  succeed  in  sup- 
pressing the  child's  individuality.  We 
only  break  his  will-power  and  originality. 
We  also  prepare  the  ground  for  future 
nervous  and  mental  maladies  character- 
ized by  their  fears,  indecisions,  hesitations, 
diffidence,  irritability,  lack  of  individu- 
ality and  absence  of  self-control. 

We  laugh  at  the  Chinese,  because  they 
bandage  the  feet  of  their  girls,  we  ridicule 
those  who  cripple  their  chest  and  mutilate 
their  figure  by  the  tight  lacing  of  their  cor- 


82  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

sets,  but  we  fail  to  realize  the  baneful  ef- 
fects of  submitting  the  young  minds  to  the 
grindstone  of  our  educational  discipline. 
I  have  known  good  fathers  and  mothers 
who  have  unfortunately  been  so  imbued 
with  the  necessity  of  disciplining  the  child 
that  they  have  crushed  the  child's  spirit  in 
the  narrow  bonds  of  routine  and  custom. 
How  can  we  expect  to  get  great  men  and 
women  when  from  infancy  we  train  our 
children  to  conform  to  the  philistine  ways 
of  Mrs.  Grundy? 

In  our  schools  and  colleges,  habits,  dis- 
cipline and  behavior  are  specially  empha- 
sized by  our  teachers,  instructors  and  pro- 
fessors. Our  deans  and  professors  think 
more  of  red  tape,  of  "points,"  of  discipline 
than  of  study;  they  think  more  of  author- 
itative suggestion  than  of  critical  in- 
struction. The  pedagogue  fashions  the 
pupil  after  his  own  image.  The  pro- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  83 

fessor,  with  his  disciplinarian  tactics, 
forces  the  student  into  the  imbecile  mum- 
my-like mannerism  of  Egyptian  pedantry 
and  into  the  barrack-regulations  of  class- 
etiquette.  Well  may  professors  of  our 
"war-schools"  claim  that  the  best  educa- 
tion is  given  in  military  academies.  They 
are  right,  if  discipline  is  education.  But 
why  not  the  reformatory,  the  asylum  and 
the  prison? 

We  trust  our  unfortunate  youth  to  the 
Procrustean  bed  of  the  mentally  obtuse, 
hide-bound  pedagogue.  We  desiccate, 
sterilize,  petrify  and  embalm  our  youth  in 
keeping  with  the  rules  of  our  Egyptian 
code  and  in  accordance  with  the  Confucian 
regulations  of  our  school-clerks  and  col- 
lege mandarins.  Our  children  learn  by 
rote  and  are  guided  by  routine. 


XV 

BEING  in  a  barbaric  stage,  we  are  afraid 
of  thought.  We  are  under  the  errone- 
ous belief  that  thinking,  study,  causes 
nervousness  and  mental  disorders.  In  my 
practice  as  physician  in  nervous  and  men- 
tal diseases,  I  can  say  without  hesitation 
that  I  have  not  met  a  single  case  of  nerv- 
ous or  mental  trouble  caused  by  too 
much  thinking  or  overstudy.  This  is  at 
present  the  opinion  of  the  best  psycho- 
pathologists.  What  produces  nervous- 
ness is  worry,  emotional  excitement  and 
lack  of  interest  in  the  work.  But  that 
is  precisely  what  we  do  with  our  children. 
We  do  not  take  care  to  develop  a  love  of 
knowledge  in  their  early  life  for  fear  of 
brain  injury,  and  then  when  it  is  late  to 

84 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  85 

acquire  the  interest,  we  force  them  to  study, 
and  we  cram  them  and  feed  them  and  stuff 
them  like  geese.  What  you  often  get  is 
fatty  degeneration  of  the  mental  liver. 
If,  however,  you  do  not  neglect  the 
child  between  the  second  and  third  year, 
and  see  to  it  that  the  brain  should  not  be 
starved,  should  have  its  proper  function, 
like  the  rest  of  the  bodily  organs,  by  de- 
veloping an  interest  in  intellectual  activ- 
ity and  love  of  knowledge,  no  forcing  of 
the  child  to  study  is  afterwards  requisite. 
The  child  will  go  on  by  himself, — he 
will  derive  intense  enjoyment  from  his 
intellectual  activity,  as  he  does  from  his 
games  and  physical  exercise.  The  child 
will  be  stronger,  healthier,  sturdier  than 
the  present  average  child,  with  its  purely 
animal  activities  and  total  neglect  of  brain- 
function.  His  physical  and  mental  de- 
velopment will  go  apace.  He  will  not  be 


86  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

a  barbarian  with  animal  proclivities  and  a 
strong  distaste  for  knowledge  and  mental 
enjoyment,  but  he  will  be  a  strong, 
healthy,  thinking  man. 

Besides,  many  a  mental  trouble  will  be 
prevented  in  adult-life.  The  child  will 
acquire  knowledge  with  the  same  ease  as 
he  learns  to  ride  the  bicycle  or  play  ball. 
By  the  tenth  year,  without  almost  any  ef- 
fort, the  child  will  acquire  the  knowledge 
which  at  present  the  best  college-graduate 
obtains  with  infinite  labor  and  pain. 
That  this  can  be  accomplished  I  can  say 
with  authority;  I  know  it  as  a  fact  from 
my  own  experience  with  child-life. 

From  an  economical  standpoint  alone, 
think  of  the  saving  it  would  ensure  for 
society.  Consider  the  fact  that  our  chil- 
dren spend  nearly  eight  years  in  the  com- 
mon school,  studying  spelling  and  arith- 
metic, and  do  not  know  them  when  they 
graduate!  Think  of  the  eight  years  of 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  87 

waste  of  school  buildings  and  salaries  for 
the  teaching  force.  However,  our  real 
object  is  not  economy,  but  the  develop- 
ment of  a  strong,  healthy,  great  race  of 
genius. 

As  fathers  and  mothers  it  may  interest 
you  to  learn  of  one  of  those  boys  who  were 
brought  up  in  the  love  and  enjoyment  of 
knowledge  for  its  own  sake.  At  the  age 
of  twelve,  when  other  children  of  his  age 
are  hardly  able  to  read  and  spell,  and  drag 
a  miserable  mental  existence  at  the  apron 
strings  of  some  antiquated  school-dame, 
the  boy  is  intensely  enjoying  courses  in 
the  highest  branches  of  mathematics  and 
astronomy  at  one  of  our  foremost  univer- 
sities. The  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  are 
known  to  him  by  heart,  and  he  is  deeply 
interested  in  the  advanced  work  of  Classi- 
cal Philology.  He  is  able  to  read  He- 
rodotus, ^Eschylus,  Sophocles,  Euripides, 
Aristophanes,  Lucian  and  other  Greek 


88  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

writers  with  the  same  zest  and  ease  as  our 
schoolboy  reads  his  Robinson  Crusoe  or 
the  productions  of  Cooper  and  Henty. 
The  boy  has  a  fair  understanding  of  Com- 
parative Philology  and  Mythology.  He 
is  well  versed  in  Logic,  Ancient  History, 
American  History  and  has  a  general  in- 
sight into  our  politics  and  into  the  ground- 
work of  our  Constitution.  At  the  same 
time  he  is  of  an  extremely  happy  disposi- 
tion, brimming  over  with  humor  and  fun. 
His  physical  condition  is  splendid,  his 
cheeks  glow  with  health.  Many  a  girl 
would  envy  his  complexion.  Being  above 
five  feet  four  he  towers  above  the  average 
boy  of  his  age.  His  physical  constitution, 
weight,  form  and  hardihood  of  organs,  far 
surpasses  that  of  the  ordinary  schoolboy. 
He  looks  like  a  boy  of  sixteen.  He  is 
healthy,  strong  and  sturdy. 

The  philistine-pseudagogues,  the  self- 
contented  school-autocrats  are  so  imbued 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  89 

with  the  fear  of  intellectual  activity  and 
with  the  superstitious  dread  of  early  men- 
tal education,  they  are  so  obsessed  with 
the  morbid  phobia  of  human  reflective 
powers,  they  are  so  deluded  by  the  belief 
that  study  causes  disease  that  they  eagerly 
adhere  to  the  delusion,  to  quote  from  a 
school-superintendent's  letter,  about  the 
boy  being  "in  a  sanitarium,  old  and  worn- 
out."  No  doubt,  the  cramming,  the  rou- 
tine, the  rote,  the  mental  and  moral  tyr- 
anny of  the  principal  and  school-superin- 
tendent do  tend  to  nervous  degeneracy 
and  mental  break-down.  Poor  old  col- 
lege owls,  academic  barn-yard-fowls  and 
worn-out  sickly  school-bats,  you  are  panic- 
stricken  by  the  power  of  sunlight,  you  are 
in  agonizing,  in  mortal  terror  of  critical, 
reflective  thought,  you  dread  and  suppress 
the  genius  of  the  young. 

We  do  not  appreciate  the  genius  har- 


90  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

bored  in  the  average  child,  and  we  let  it 
lie  fallow.  We  are  mentally  poor,  not 
because  we  lack  riches,  but  because  we  do 
not  know  how  to  use  the  wealth  of  mines, 
the  hidden  treasures,  the  now  inaccessible 
mental  powers  which  we  possess. 

In  speaking  of  our  mental  capacities, 
Francis  Galton,  I  think,  says  that  we  are 
in  relation  to  the  ancient  Greeks  what  the 
Bushmen  and  Hottentots  are  in  relation  to 
us.  Galton  and  many  other  learned  men 
regard  the  modern  European  races  as  infe- 
rior to  the  Hellenic  race.  They  are  wrong, 
and  I  know  from  experience  that  they  are 
wrong.  It  rests  in  our  hands  either  to 
remain  inferior  barbarians  or  to  rival  and 
even  surpass  in  brilliancy  the  genius  of 
the  ancient  Hellenes.  We  can  develop 
into  a  great  race  by  the  proper  education 
of  man's  genius. 


XVI 

ONE  other  important  point  claims  our 
attention  in  the  process  of  education  of 
man's  genius.  We  must  immunize  our 
children  against  mental  microbes,  as  we 
vaccinate  our  babies  against  small-pox. 
The  cultivation  of  critical  judgment  and 
the  knowledge  of  evil  are  two  powerful 
constituents  that  form  the  antitoxin  for 
the  neutralization  of  the  virulent  toxins 
produced  by  mental  microbes.  At  the 
same  time  we  should  not  neglect  proper 
conditions  of  mental  hygiene.  We  should 
not  people  the  child's  mind  with  ghost- 
stories,  with  absurd  beliefs  in  the  super- 
natural, and  with  articles  of  creed  charged 
with  brimstone  and  pitch  from  the  bowels 
of  hell.  We  must  guard  the  child  against 

91 


92  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

all  evil  fears,  superstitions,  prejudices  and 
credulity. 

We  should  counteract  the  baneful  in- 
fluences of  the  pathogenic,  pestiferous, 
mental  microbes  which  now  infest  our 
social  air,  since  the  child,  not  having  yet 
formed  the  antitoxin  of  critical  judgment 
and  knowledge  of  evil,  has  not  the  power 
of  resisting  mental  infection,  and  is  thus 
very  susceptible  to  mental  contagion  on 
account  of  his  extreme  suggestibility. 
The  cultivation  of  credulity,  the  absence 
of  critical  judgment  and  of  recognition 
of  evil,  with  consequent  increase  of  sug- 
gestibility, make  man  an  easy  prey  to 
all  kinds  of  social  delusions,  mental  epi- 
demics, religious  crazes,  financial  manias, 
and  political  plagues,  which  have  been  the 
baleful  pest  of  aggregate  humanity  in  all 
ages. 

The  immunization  of  children,  the  de- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  93 

velopment  of  resistance  to  mental  germs 
whether  moral,  immoral  or  religious,  can 
only  be  effected  by  the  medical  man  with 
a  psychological  and  psychopathological 
training.  Just  as  science,  philosophy  and 
art  have  gradually  passed  out  of  the  con- 
trol of  the  priest,  so  now  we  find  that  the 
control  of  mental  and  moral  life  is  grad- 
ually passing  away  from  under  the  influ- 
ence of  the  church  into  the  hands  of  the 
medical  psychopathologist. 

The  physical  life  of  the  nation  is  now 
gradually  being  regulated  by  medical  sci- 
ence with  a  consequent  decrease  of  disease 
and  mortality.  Gradually  and  slowly  the 
school  begins  to  feel  the  need  of  medical 
advice,  both  as  to  the  health  of  the  pupils 
and  their  more  efficient  training.  Gradu- 
ally the  medical  man  assumes  the  respon- 
sibility of  guiding  the  teacher  and  telling 
him  why  the  pupils  are  defective  in  their 


94  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

studies  and  why  the  pedantic  methods  of 
academic  pedagogy  are  arid  and  sterile. 
In  some  cases  the  doctor  actually  under- 
takes the  training  of  the  young.  Thus 
the  Italian  doctor,  Maria  Montessori, 
from  the  education  of  defective  children 
has  finally  undertaken,  with  immense,  al- 
most phenomenal,  success,  the  training 
and  education  of  normal  children. 

As  we  look  forward  into  the  future 
we  begin  to  see  that  the  school  is  com- 
ing under  the  control  of  the  medical 
man.  The  medical  man  free  from  super- 
stitions and  prejudices,  possessed  of  the 
science  of  mind  and  body,  is  to  assume 
in  the  future  the  supervision  of  the  educa- 
tion of  the  nation. 

The  schoolmaster  and  the  schoolma'am 
with  their  narrow-minded,  pedantic  pseu- 
dogogics  are  gradually  losing  prestige 
and  passing  away,  while  the  medical  man 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  95 

alone  is  able  to  cope  with  the  serious 
threatening  danger  of  national  mental 
degeneration.  Just  as  the  medical  pro- 
fession now  saves  the  nation  from  physi- 
cal degeneration  and  works  for  the  physi- 
cal regeneration  of  the  body-politic,  so 
will  the  medical  profession  of  the  fu- 
ture assume  the  duty  of  saving  the  nation 
from  mental  and  moral  decline,  from  de- 
generation into  a  people  of  fear-pos- 
sessed, mind-racked  psychopathies  and 
neurotics,  with  broken  wills  and  crushed 
individualities  on  the  one  hand,  accompan- 
ied, on  the  other  hand,  by  the  still  worse 
affliction  and  incurable  malady  of  a  self- 
contented  mediocrity  and  a  hopeless,  Chi- 
nese philistinism. 

There  are  in  the  United  States  about 
two  hundred  thousand  insane,  while  the 
victims  of  psychopathic,  mental  maladies 
may  be  counted  by  the  millions.  Insan- 


96  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

ity  can  be  greatly  alleviated,  but  much, 
if  not  all,  of  that  psychopathic  mental 
misery  known  as  functional  mental  dis- 
ease is  entirely  preventable.  It  is  the 
result  of  our  pitiful,  wretched,  brain- 
starving,  mind-crippling  methods  of  edu- 
cation. 


XVII 

IN  my  work  of  mental  and  nervous  dis- 
eases I  become  more  and  more  convinced 
of  the  preponderant  influence  of  early 
childhood  in  the  causation  of  psychopathic 
mental  maladies.  Most,  in  fact  all,  of 
those  functional  mental  diseases  originate 
in  early  childhood.  A  couple  of  concrete 
cases  will  perhaps  best  illustrate  my  point : 
The  patient  is  a  young  man  of  26.  He 
suffers  from  intense  melancholic  depres- 
sion, often  amounting  to  agony.  He  is 
possessed  by  the  fear  of  having  committed 
the  unpardonable  sin.  He  thinks  that  he 
is  damned  to  suffer  tortures  in  hell  for  all 
eternity.  I  cannot  go  here  into  the  de- 
tails of  the  case,  but  an  examination  of 

97 


98  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

the  patient  by  the  hypnoidal  state  clearly 
traced  his  present  condition  to  the  influ- 
ence of  an  old  woman,  a  Sunday  school 
teacher,  who  infected  him  with  those  vir- 
ulent germs  in  his  very  early  childhood, 
about  the  age  of  five.  Let  me  read  to  you 
a  paragraph  from  the  patient's  own  ac- 
count: "It  is  difficult  to  place  the  begin- 
ning of  my  abnormal  fear.  It  certainly 
originated  from  doctrines  of  hell  which  I 
heard  in  early  childhood,  particularly  from 
a  rather  ignorant  elderly  woman,  who 
taught  Sunday  school.  My  early  reli- 
gious thought  was  chiefly  concerned  with 
the  direful  eternity  of  torture  that  might 
be  awaiting  me,  if  I  was  not  good  enough 
to  be  saved." 

Another  patient  of  mine,  a  clergyman's 
wife,  was  extremely  nervous,  depressed, 
and  suffered  from  insomnia,  from  night- 
mares, from  panophobia,  general  fear, 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  99 

dread  of  the  unknown,  from  claustro- 
phobia, fear  of  remaining  alone,  fear  of 
darkness  and  numerous  other  fears  and 
insistent  ideas,  into  the  details  of  which  I 
cannot  go  here.  By  means  of  the  hypnoi- 
dal  state  the  symptoms  were  traced  to 
impressions  of  early  childhood;  when  at 
the  age  of  five,  the  patient  was  suddenly 
confronted  by  a  maniacal  woman.  The 
child  was  greatly  frightened,  and  since 
that  time  she  became  possessed  by  the  fear 
of  insanity.  When  the  patient  gave  birth 
to  her  child,  she  was  afraid  the  child  would 
become  insane ;  many  a  time  she  even  had 
a  feeling  that  the  child  was  insane.  Thus 
the  fear  of  insanity  is  traced  to  an  expe- 
rience of  early  childhood,  an  experience 
which,  having  become  subconscious,  is 
manifesting  itself  persistently  in  the  pa- 
tient's consciousness. 

The  patient's  parents  were  very  reli- 


100  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

gious,  and  the  child  was  brought  up  not 
only  in  the  fear  of  God,  but  also  in  the 
fear  of  hell  and  the  devil.  Being  sensi- 
tive and  imaginative,  the  devils  of  the 
gospel  were  to  her  stern  realities.  She 
had  a  firm  belief  in  "diabolical  posses- 
sions" and  "unclean  spirits";  the  legend 
of  Jesus  exorcising  in  the  country  of  the 
Gadarenes  unclean  spirits,  whose  name 
is  Legion,  was  to  her  a  tangible  reality. 
She  was  brought  up  on  brimstone  and 
pitch,  with  everlasting  fires  of  the  "bot- 
tomless pit"  for  sinners  and  unbelievers. 
In  the  hypnoidal  state  she  clearly  remem- 
bered the  preacher,  who  used  every  Sun- 
day to  give  her  the  horrors  by  his  pictur- 
esque descriptions  of  the  tortures  of  the 
"bottomless  pit."  She  was  in  anguish 
over  the  unsolved  question:  "Do  little 
sinner-girls  go  to  hell?"  This  fear  of  hell 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS  101 

made  the  little  girl  feel  depressed  and 
miserable  and  poisoned  many  a  cheerful 
moment  of  her  life. 

What  a  lasting  effect  and  what  a  mel- 
ancholy gloom  this  fear  of  ghosts  and  of 
unclean  spirits  of  the  bottomless  pit  pro- 
duced on  this  young  life  may  be  judged 
from  the  following  facts:  When  the  pa- 
tient was  about  eleven  years  old,  a  young 
girl,  a  friend  of  hers,  having  noticed  the 
patient's  fear  of  ghosts,  played  on  her  one 
of  those  silly,  practical  jokes,  the  effect 
of  which  on  sensitive  natures  is  often 
disastrous  and  lasting.  The  girl  dis- 
guised herself  as  a  ghost,  in  a  white  sheet, 
and  appeared  to  the  patient,  who  was  just 
on  the  point  of  falling  asleep.  The  child 
shrieked  in  terror  and  fainted.  Since 
that  time  the  patient  suffered  from  night- 
mares and  was  mortally  afraid  to  sleep 


102  PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

alone ;  she  passed  many  a  night  in  a  state 
of  excitement,  frenzied  with  the  fear  of 
apparitions  and  ghosts. 

When  about  the  age  of  seventeen,  she 
apparently  freed  herself  from  the  belief 
in  ghosts  and  unclean  powers.  But  the 
fear  acquired  in  her  childhood  did  not 
lapse;  it  persisted  subconsciously  and 
manifested  itself  in  the  form  of  uncon- 
trollable fears.  She  was  afraid  to  remain 
alone  in  a  room,  especially  in  the  evening. 
Thus,  once  when  she  had  to  go  upstairs, 
alone  to  pack  her  trunks,  a  gauzy  garment 
called  forth  the  experience  of  her  ghost- 
fright;  she  had  the  illusion  of  seeing  a 
ghost,  and  fell  fainting  to  the  floor.  Un- 
less specially  treated,  fears  acquired  in 
childhood  last  through  life. 

"Every  ugly  thing,"  says  Mosso,  the 
great  Italian  physiologist,  "told  to  the 
child,  every  shock,  every  fright  given  him, 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          103 

will  remain  like  minute  splinters  in  the 
flesh,  to  torture  him  all  his  life  long. 

"An  old  soldier  whom  I  asked  what  his 
greatest  fears  had  been,  answered  me 
thus:  *I  have  only  had  one,  but  it  pur- 
sues me  still.  I  am  nearly  seventy  years 
old,  I  have  looked  death  in  the  face  I  do 
not  know  how  many  times;  I  have  never 
lost  heart  in  any  danger,  but  when  I  pass 
a  little  old  church  in  the  shades  of  the 
forest,  or  a  deserted  chapel  in  the  moun- 
tains, I  always  remember  a  neglected  ora- 
tory in  my  native  village,  and  I  shiver  and 
look  around,  as  though  seeking  the  corpse 
of  a  murdered  man  which  I  once  saw  car- 
ried into  it  when  a  child,  and  with  which 
an  old  servant  wanted  to  shut  me  up  to 
make  me  good.' '  Here,  too,  experiences 
of  early  childhood  have  persisted  subcon- 
sciously throughout  lifetime. 


XVIII 

I  APPEAL  to  you,  fathers  and  mothers, 
and  to  you,  liberal-minded  readers,  asking 
you  to  turn  your  attention  to  the  educa- 
tion of  your  children,  to  the  training  of 
the  young  generation  of  future  citizens. 
I  do  not  appeal  to  our  official  educators, 
to  our  scientific,  psychological  pseuda- 
gogues,  to  the  clerks  of  our  teaching  shops, 
— for  they  are  beyond  all  hope.  From 
that  quarter  I  expect  nothing  but  attacks 
and  abuse.  We  cannot  possibly  expect 
of  the  philistine-educator  and  mandarin- 
pseudagogue  the  adoption  of  different 
views  of  education.  We  should  not  keep 
new  wine  in  old  goat-skins.  The  present 
school-system  squanders  the  resources  of 
the  country  and  wastes  the  energies,  the 
lives  of  our  children.  Like  Cato  our  cry 

104 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          105 

should  be  Carthago  delenda  est, — the 
school-system  should  be  abolished  and 
with  it  should  go  the  present  psychologi- 
zing educator,  the  schoolmaster  and  the 
schoolma'am. 

Fathers  and  mothers,  you  keep  in  your 
hands  the  fate  of  the  young  generation. 
You  are  conscious  of  the  great  responsi- 
bility, of  the  vast,  important  task  laid  upon 
you  by  the  education  of  your  children. 
For,  according  to  the  character  of  the 
training  and  education  given  to  the  young, 
they  may  be  made  a  sickly  host  of  nervous 
wrecks  and  miserable  wretches;  or  they 
may  be  formed  into  a  narrow-minded, 
bigoted,  mediocre  crowd  of  self-contented 
"cultured"  philistines,  bat-blind  to  evil;  or 
they  may  be  made  a  great  race  of  genius 
with  powers  of  rational  control  of  their 
latent,  potential,  reserve  energy.  The 
choice  remains  with  you. 


APPENDIX 

PRECOCITY  IN   CHILDREN  * 

BY  precocity  I  mean  the  manifestation  of 
the  child's  mental  functions  at  a  period 
earlier  than  the  one  observed  in  the  past 
and  present  generations  of  children. 

In  the  course  of  his  growth  and  de- 
velopment the  individual  unfolds  his  inner 
powers  through  acquisition  of  the  stored- 
up  experiences  of  previous  generations. 
The  well  known  biogenetic  law  may,  with 
some  modifications,  be  applied  to  mental 
life.  The  development  of  the  individual 

*  Reproduced  in  part,  with  the  kind  permission 
of  the  publishers,  from  my  contribution  to  the 
forthcoming  Encyclopaedia  of  Education,  published 
by  Sir  Isaac  Pitman  and  Sons,  London,  England. 

107 


108          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

is  an  abbreviated  reproduction  of  the  evo- 
lution of  the  species.  Briefly  put:  Onto- 
genesis is  an  epitome  of  Phylogenesis. 
This  biogenetic  law  holds  true  in  the  do- 
main of  education.  The  stored-up  ex- 
periences of  the  race  are  condensed,  fore- 
shortened, and  recapitulated  in  the  child's 
life  history.  This  process  of  progressive 
"precocity,"  or  of  foreshortening  of  edu- 
cation, has  been  going  on  unconsciously  in 
the  course  of  human  evolution.  We  have 
reached  a  stage  when  man  can  be  made 
conscious  of  this  fundamental  process, 
thus  getting  control  over  his  own  growth 
and  development. 

Although  the  process  of  foreshortening 
of  education  has  been  taking  place 
throughout  the  history  of  mankind,  and 
especially  of  civilized  humanity,  still  the 
process  has  remained  imperceptible  on  ac- 
count of  its  extremely  slow  rate  of  prog- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          109 

ress.  Hence  the  fact  of  "precocity,"  or 
of  early  development  of  children,  has  been 
hitherto  regarded  as  rare,  as  phenomenal. 
Like  all  rare  phenomena,  precocity,  or 
early  child  development,  is  considered  as 
unique,  as  abnormal,  and  even  as  patho- 
logical. In  fact,  many  still  regard  pre- 
cocity as  some  form  of  malady  akin  to 
mental  alienation. 

It  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  phe- 
nomena, at  first  scarce  and  rare,  may 
under  favorable  conditions  become  suf- 
ficiently numerous  to  be  quite  common. 
In  fact,  we  may  lay  it  down  as  a  law  that 
all  discoveries,  inventions,  and  changes  in 
general,  economical,  political,  social,  men- 
tal, moral,  and  religious,  first  appear  on 
a  small  scale  in  limited  areas  from  which 
they  spread  in  various  directions.  Or- 
ganisms start,  as  variations  or  mutations, 
from  minute  nuclei  of  growth;  species 


110          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

have  their  origin  in  small  centres  and  re- 
stricted areas.  A  new  species  may  begin 
with  some  apparently  insignificant  varia- 
tion which  may  grow  and  develop,  and 
which,  from  a  certain  standpoint,  may  be 
regarded  as  an  abnormality. 

What  at  present  is  considered  as  "pre- 
cocity," and  hence  as  an  abnormality,  may 
really  be  the  foreshadowing  of  the  future. 
The  apparently  precocious  variation  may 
and  will  turn  out  a  normal  phenomenon. 
The  stone  which  the  builders  refused  is 
become  the  head  stone  of  the  corner. 
Early  education,  precocity,  is  to  become 
the  corner  stone  of  human  life.  At  pres- 
ent the  preliminary  period  of  child  educa- 
tion is  unduly  retarded  to  the  detriment 
of  the  individual  and  society. 

The  truth  is,  we  do  not  realize  the  im- 
portance of  early  training.  We  begin 
education  late  in  the  child's  life,  when  dis- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          111 

positions  have  become  formed  and  habits 
have  become  rigid.  This  delay  seriously 
injures  the  growth  of  the  child  by  lower- 
ing the  level  of  mental  activity.  The 
critical  points  of  formation  of  mental  in- 
terests are  allowed  to  slip  by,  leaving  the 
individual  irresponsive  to  mental,  aesthetic, 
and  moral  interests.  The  critical  turning 
points,  when  the  best  energies  could  be 
brought  out,  are  not  taken  care  of  at  the 
right  moment. 

The  mental  functions  become  pre- 
maturely atrophied  and  degenerated. 
When  we  later  on  attempt  to  awaken 
those  functions,  we  are  surprised  to  find 
them  absent.  We  labor  under  the  false 
impression  that  the  child  is  naturally 
inapt  and  deficient.  To  make  up  for  this 
apparent  deficiency  we  force  the  child's 
mind  into  narrow  channels,  crippling  and 
deforming  it  into  mean  mediocrity.  The 


112          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

child  is  run  into  the  rigid  moulds  of  home, 
school,  and  college  with  the  result  of 
permanent  mutilation  of  originality  and 
genius.  The  individual  is  deformed,  be- 
cause the  critical  spirit  of  inquiry  and 
originality  is  racked  on  the  Procrustes' 
bed  of  home  and  school.  The  unfortunate 
thing  about  it  is  the  firm  belief  that  the 
crippled  spirit  of  the  child  is  a  congenital 
mediocrity.  Instead  of  shouldering  the 
fault,  we  put  the  burden  on  Heredity. 
Darwinism  with  its  spontaneous  variation 
and  hereditary  transmission,  Austro-Ger- 
manic  Mendelism,  accompanied  by  a  wide- 
spread propaganda  of  Eugenics,  have 
blotted  out  from  view  the  far  more  fun- 
damental factors  of  environment  and  edu- 
cation which  play  such  a  paramount  role 
in  man's  life. 

We  may  profit  by  recent  studies  in 
Psychopathology.     In  my  investigations 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          113 

I  have  shown  the  important  role  which 
early  child  experience  plays  in  the  pa- 
tient's life.  Psychopathic  affections  can 
be  traced  to  child  fears  which  become 
afterwards  reinforced  by  unfavorable  con- 
ditions of  life.  This  is  formulated  in  my 
works  on  Psychopathology.  Psychopa- 
thology  clearly  brings  out  the  significant 
fact  that  a  good  start  in  early  childhood 
is  of  the  utmost  consequence  to  the  in- 
dividual. Only  a  good  education  in  early 
life  can  save  man  from  the  innumerable 
psychopathic  maladies  to  which  he  is  sub- 
ject. The  seeds  of  vicious  habits  and  of 
criminal  tendencies  can  be  eliminated  in 
early  childhood. 

Early  development  or  what  is  termed 
"precocity"  in  children  will  not  only  pre- 
vent vice,  crime,  and  disease,  but  will 
strengthen  the  individual  along  all  lines, 
physical,  mental,  and  moral.  We  should 


114          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

be  careful  not  to  cast  the  child's  mind 
into  ready  made  moulds,  not  to  subject 
his  mind,  his  character  to  the  yoke  of 
meaningless  mannerisms  and  rigid  formal- 
ities. We  should  have  respect  for  the 
child's  personality.  We  should  remem- 
ber that  there  is  genius  in  every  healthy, 
normal  child. 

We  are  blind  to  the  child's  latent  genius, 
because  we  look  to  brute  force  as  our 
standard.  Like  savages,  we  are  afraid  of 
genius,  especially  when  it  is  manifested 
as  "precocity  in  children."  This  abject 
fear  of  genius  and  of  precocity  is  one  of 
the  most  pernicious  philistine  supersti- 
tions, causing  the  retardation  of  the  prog- 
ress of  humanity.  The  fear  of  mental 
precocity  is  essentially  the  phobia  of  the 
inveterate  philistine. 

We  should  bear  in  mind  that  the  phil- 
istine is  an  insignificant,  though  exact 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          115 

part  of  a  huge  social  machine,  of  a  Frank- 
enstein "kultur"  before  which  the  phil- 
istine  prostrates  himself  in  dust,  a  social 
monster  of  which  he  is  proud  to  form  an 
irresponsible  mite.  Whether  he  be  an 
atom  of  a  political  organization,  of  a  na- 
tion, or  of  a  military  kultur-system,  the 
philistine  is  trained  to  be  content  to  play 
the  same  ignoble,  slavish  role  of  submis- 
sion, obedience,  and  irresponsibility. 
Without  personal  conscience,  without  per- 
sonal will,  without  personal  initiative,  the 
impersonal  philistine  is  like  the  stupid 
genie  of  Aladdin's  lamp  who  slavishly 
obeys  the  master  of  the  magic  lamp. 

The  present  horrible  European  war 
(predicted  in  this  volume  several  years 
before  the  onset  of  the  war.  See  pp.  30, 
31)  is  the  unfortunate,  but  natural  out- 
come of  philistine  education  and  philistine 
life.  The  immediate  cause  of  the  war  may 


116          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

be  traced  to  politics,  greed,  competition,  to 
commercial,  industrial,  cultural,  national, 
international,  and  racial  complications. 
At  bottom,  however,  the  present  Euro- 
pean war  is  ultimately  due  to  our  per- 
nicious system  of  training,  the  bane  of 
our  industrial,  social  life.  Millions  of  men 
are  drilled  and  disciplined  to  act  as  autom- 
ata; men  are  trained  from  childhood, 
at  home,  school,  college,  and  university 
to  surrender  their  individual  judgment, 
and  follow  blindly  an  alleged  "social  con- 
/  sciousness,"  entrusted,  by  a  set  of  phil- 
jistine  bureaucrats,  to  superior  leaders,  to 
/  generals,  admirals,  and  field-marshals. 
Men  are  hypnotized  by  a  pernicious  and 
vicious  system  of  training  and  quasi-edu- 
cation  to  consider  it  a  high,  sacred  ideal 
to  obey  implicitly  the  will  of  a  few  of- 
ficials and  diplomats,  to  attack,  plunder 
and  slaughter  at  the  command  of  gen- 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          117 

erals  and  officers,  in  the  interest  of  a 
jplutocratic  oligarchy,  hallowed  by  the 
vague  shibboleth:  "Flag,  Country,  Pa- 
triotism." *  The  youth  of  nations  is  de- 
bauched with  the  belief  in  the  supreme 

*  "The  cheapest  form  of  pride/'  says  Schopen- 
hauer, "is  national  pride;  for  if  a  man  is  proud 
of  his  own  nation  it  follows  that  he  has  no  quali- 
ties of  his  own  of  which  he  can  be  proud;  other- 
wise he  would  not  have  recourse  to  those  which  he 
shares  with  his  fellow-men.  .  .  .  Every  miserable 
fool  who  has  nothing  at  all  of  which  he  can  be 
proud  adopts  as  a  last  resource  pride  in  the  nation 
to  which  he  belongs;  he  is  ready  and  glad  to  de- 
fend all  its  faults  and  follies,  tooth  and  nail,  thus 
reimbursing  himself  for  his  own  inferiority.  .  .  . 
National  character  is  only  another  name  for  the 
particular  form  which  the  littleness,  perversity,  and 
baseness  of  mankind  take  in  every  country."  .  .  . 
"Narrowness,  prejudice,  vanity,  and  self-interest 
are  the  main  elements  of  patriotism."  .  .  .  "Does 
not  all  history  show  that  whenever  a  king  is  firmly 
established  on  the  throne,  and  the  people  reach 
some  degree  of  prosperity,  he  uses  it  to  lead  an 
army,  like  a  band  of  robbers,  against  adjoining 
countries?  Are  not  almost  all  wars  ultimately  un- 
dertaken for  purpose  of  plunder?"  .  .  .  Schopen- 
hauer prophetically  warns  his  countrymen:  "All 
war  is  a  matter  of  robbery,  and  the  Germans 
should  take  that  as  a  warning." 


118          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

grandeur  of  delivering  their  personal  re- 
sponsibility in  the  keeping  of  a  handful 
of  Byzantine  bureaucrats,  irresponsible 
junkers,  and  half -crazed  Caesars. 

The  principle  "Be  Childlike"  is  para- 
mount in  the  education  of  mankind.  The 
child  represents  the  future,  all  the  pos- 
sibilities, all  the  coming  greatness  of  the 
human  race.  We,  the  adults,  are  con- 
taminated by  the  brutal  passions  and  vices 
incident  to  the  struggle  for  existence  and 
self-preservation. 

Plasticity  of  mind  is  characteristic  of 
genius.  Plasticity  of  mind  and  body  is 
preeminently  characteristic  of  the  child. 
Adaptability  and  plasticity  are  found  in 
all  young  tissue,  muscle,  gland,  and  nerve. 
As  the  organism  ages,  becomes  differ- 
entiated, and  adapted  to  special  functions 
and  conditions  of  life,  it  loses  its  original 
plasticity.  The  tissues  become  fixed  and 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          119 

the  functions  set.  The  adult's  brain  and 
mind  begin  to  work  in  ruts.  The  child-is 
superior  to  the  adult. 

The  child  looks  at  the  world  with  eyes 
simple,  clear,  bright,  not  blinded  by  the 
heavy  scales  of  traditions,  superstitions, 
and  prejudices  of  remote  ages.  The  in- 
tricate worries,  complex  fears,  selfish  mo- 
tives, brutal  passions,  greed,  revenge, 
malice,  vice,  enmity  do  not  as  yet  mar  the 
soul  of  the  child.  Artificial  needs,  strong 
animal  passions  have  no  firm  hold  on  the 
child's  mind.  The  child's  mind  is  purer,) 
fresher,  brighter,  far  more  original  than , 
the  adult  intelligence  with  its  philistine 
notions  and  hide-bound  habits  of  thought 
and  belief. 

With  age  the  mind  becomes  specialized 
and  degraded  in  quality.  Unless  checked 
by  a  good  education  and  by  a  persistent 
course  of  mental  activity,  intellectual  and 


120          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

other  mental  interests,  the  adult  mind  is 
apt  to  deteriorate.  Unless  controlled  by 
a  good  education  and  by  intense  mental 
interests,  free  from  service  to  animal 
needs,  the  emotions  of  self-regard,  the  im- 
pulse of  self-preservation  with  its  fear  in- 
stinct gradually  gain  in  man  the  upper 
hand.-<ln  the  child,  on  the  contrary,  the 
personal  interests  are  relatively  weak,  and 
fluctuating,  hence  the  possibility  of  pure 
disinterestedness,  pure  curiosity,  love  of 
learning,  the  root  of  all  originality  pres- 
ent both  in  genius  and  the  childN  The 
child  presents  the  innocence  and  gentle- 
ness of  human  genius,  the  adult  philistine 
is  the  embodiment  of  the  force  and  cun- 
ning of  the  brute.\ 

We  should  not  be  scared  by  the  bug- 
bear of  precocity.  We  should  awaken 
man's  genius  by  giving  the  child  an  early, 
a  "precocious"  education.  We  should 


PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS          121 

bear  in  mind  that  the  knowledge  of  our 
schoolboys  and  schoolgirls  far  surpasses 
that  of  the  ancient  sages  or  of  the  medi- 
eval doctors.  We  should  learn  to  under- 
stand and  to  utilize  the  process  of  pro- 
gressive foreshortening  of  race  acquisi- 
tions in  the  history  of  the  individual. 

The  great  biologist,  Professor  C.  S. 
Minot,  comes  to  a  similar  conclusion,  as 
the  result  of  his  profound  biological  in- 
vestigations: "I  believe,"  says  Minot,  "that 
this  principle  of  psychological  develop- 
ment, paralleling  the  career  of  physical 
development,  needs  to  be  more  considered 
in  arranging  our  educational  plans.  For 
if  it  be  true  that  the  decline  in  the  power 
of  learning  is  most  rapid  at  first,  it  is  evi- 
dent that  we  want  to  make  as  much  use 
of  the  early  years  as  possible — that  the 
tendency,  for  instance,  which  has  existed 
in  many  of  our  universities,  to  postpone 


122          PHILISTINE  AND  GENIUS 

the  period  of  entrance  into  college,  is 
biologically  an  erroneous  tendency.  It 
would  be  better  to  have  the  young  man  get 
to  college  earlier,  graduate  earlier,  get 
into  practical  life  or  into  professional 
schools  earlier,  while  the  power  of  learning 
is  greater." 

I  may  say  that  within  my  experience 
children  who  had  the  advantage  of  an 
early  education  and  training  manifested 
a  higher  grade  of  intellectual  and  moral 
life,  a  far  better  state  of  physical  health 
than  children  brought  up  under  the  pres- 
ent retarding  and  crippling  system  of  edu- 
cation. In  conclusion  I  may  add  that  in 
order  to  gain  access  to  man's  Reserve 
Energy  we  must  have  recourse  to  early 
child  education,  to  the  much  maligned, 
and  greatly  feared  "Precocity  in  Chil- 
dren," 


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